Afterlife of a Nowhere District

The city we live in today is a never-ending sprawl. Large infrastructures were intended tosupport people’s lives, but oftentimes they became burdens themselves. Viaducts were builtto bring us further, however their massive volumes occupied the land until it became a districtof nowhere. Power plants were built to provide energy, but causing environmental pollutionand even more energy demand.

The solution lies not in invading more land or blindly proliferating structures, but elevatingthe interrelationship of systems, materiality and coherence with environment to enhance thesustainability of a city. To enrich a place into as self-sufficient as it could be, in my opinion,is a greater way to close this vicious cycle.

Fungi is known to play such a role in a forest ecosystem. It constructs networks to transportnutrients and signals between plants and establishes mutualistic symbiosis with plants likemoss or algae. Every inch of space and energy is utilized to its utmost.

The old Beimen viaduct was left unneeded after the underground railway was constructed.What if we redesign the worn-out structures into a sustainable infrastructure?. A place toprovide society energy, lights, social spaces, even food through this fungal-plant symbiosis.By overlaying mycelium structure on the overdue contexts, to input a living system thatgrows, metabolizes and produces. Combining algae and moss, it can also be seen as a waterpurification system and light harvesting plant for the entire city.

If our society could evolve and flourish like nature does, architecture would cease to bemerely envelopes to accommodate peoples’ lives, it would be an ecosystem while us being apart of it. I believe many issues we face today such as environmental pollution, energydeficiency and food deficiency will be addressed more efficiently under such evolution