11:00 rC7 MyCoPulP

Students: Qianyuan Jin, Xiaoxuan Qu, lokyi Chan

Design: Richard Beckett , Chris Whiteside

Technical: Juan Cantu, Eleana Polychronaki

Theory: Yota Adilenidou

MycoPulp explores the development of low energy, rapidly renewable composite materials for architecture that are part fabricated part ‘grown’ . Sited within the fields of biodigital design and engineered living materials, the projects utilises waste materials in line with trends towards circular material economies that then serve as a structural scaffold for the secondary growth of mycelium to explore living building elements. This biofabrication approach produces ‘unruly’ composites, that are partly controllable in terms of stiffness, thickness and mass, but vibrant and ephemeral in their form and behaviour as they lose or gain moisture, and become colonised by time, environment and nature. Using this approach, the project rejects the modern paradigm of demolition and rebuild and instead explores the adaptive reuse of non-structural building parts using materials that require a reframing of the idea that buildings should be permanent. These composites are imagined as components for non-permanent elements of the building fabric, creating ephemeral biological spaces for buildings that undergo cyclical phases of decay and re-growth/manufacture.