Huy Bui’s Brooklyn Loft Is Like a Self-Contained Jungle

For many New Yorkers, seeing a sapling growing on the street counts as time in nature, but not Huy Bui. The designer/artist who co-created Plant-in City, a stackable-terrarium system made specifically for apartment-dwellers, lives in Brooklyn amid a domestic landscape flourishing with his favorite species. Pots and planters crowd almost every surface of his studio loft, but the centerpiece is a complex network of his own terrariums that also functions as a partition for his sleeping nook. Elsewhere, framed burlap sacks, a former workbench scarred with saw marks, and his mineral collection are on display. Earthiness, it seems, is a motif in both Bui’s work and life.