“Every advertisement is speculative fiction. The ever-blank future. The myth of forward momentum. The cipher where the present gets stolen and sold off in pieces. The apocalypse is the past, the dystopia already happened, and is happening, and will happen again.”
— Julian K. Jarboe, Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel
“One way of dealing with the boredom of our own needs might be to complicate them unnecessarily, so as always to have something new to desire. Human needs, Schopenhauer thought, are not in their essence complex. On the contrary, their “basis is very narrow: it consists of health, food, protection from heat and cold, and sexual gratification; or the lack of these things.” Yet on this narrow strip we build the extraordinary edifice of pleasure and pain, of hope and disappointment!”
— Zadie Smith, “Windows on the Will” (via thirdity)
The UK’s PLP Architects is focused on creating a greener future by collaborating with nature, developing a fungus-based modular block that is renewable and biodegradable, and has the potential to become a new building material with minimal environmental impact.
In biology, the word “symbiosis” is used to describe two different organisms living together for mutual benefit. Borrowing from the concept of symbiosis, it’s predicted that the current Anthropocene age – the age of humans – will make way for the Symbiocene, an era in which humans and nature are reintegrated for the good of the planet.
The folks at PLP Architecture, based in London, have embraced the coming Symbiocene, transitioning to the practice of sumbiotecture, construction focused on the biodegradability of all materials and the use of non-polluting, renewable energy. As part of their transition, over the past year, PLP’s in-house research group, PLP Labs, has studied the structural capabilities and architectural potential of mycelium biocomposites.
