IN PART BECAUSE of Brexit, Rusak decided a couple of years ago to move his studio to Warsaw, where he rents three adjacent spaces, totaling 5,400 square feet, inside an industrial park 10 minutes from the city center. вЂњWe grow these living things that we keep for two weeks, and then they end up in a bin.вЂќ

вЂњSo much effort goes into the flower industry, which is massive and confusing,вЂќ he says. About a decade ago, while in his masterвЂ™s program at LondonвЂ™s Royal College of Art, he began using discarded blooms from a flower market to create painterly textiles, pressing the petalsвЂ™ natural pigments onto silk -В a metaphorical way of extending their life, at least until the colors inevitably faded.

ItвЂ™s fitting, then, that the 34-year-old has built an international following for furnishings and objects that incorporate flowers and plants in unexpected ways. вЂњI can still feel the warmth and smell the weeds and bacteria growing there,вЂќ he says.

His maternal great-grandfather and grandfather were flower growers in Warsaw and, although their business shuttered just before he was born, he often played in those abandoned, overgrown glass structures. ONE OF THE designer Marcin RusakвЂ™s lasting memories from his childhood in Poland was spending time in his familyвЂ™s greenhouses.

The long dark decay