MyCOFARMx
Tutors: Yusuke Obuchi & Robert Stuart-Smith
Team: Bo Thamwiset [ Thailand ] Junjie Zeng [ China ]
Walee Phiriyaphongsak [ Thailand ] Xin Guo [ China ]
MycoFARMx is a proposal for a prototypical mushroom park in
Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, Southern China, on a rice-field site
that is presently at risk of being swallowed by rapid urban sprawl
development. An ecological retrofitting of a symbiotic natural
process offers a means of increasing both natural and social capital.
Rice straw, an abundant by-product from the rice field, is solidified
by microbial agents called ‘mycelia’(mushroom spawn) which
grow as a living material and evolve into a living architecture that
is biodegradable as a close-loop design back into the rice field.
The catenary draping and grafting of the banyan tree provides the
inspiration for the geometrical construction that solidifies the soft
bodies within the closed threshold of branches, providing the selfbinding
properties that make the whole geometry more rigid. An
evolutionary design strategy has been used to incorporate material
cycles within architectural programme cycles through time-based
adaptability, grow-ability and decomposability.