The Architecture of Sustainable Growth
tinyBE is a series of exhibitions in public space that will feature nine habitable sculptures created by international artists. The first exhibition will run from May to August 2021 in Metzlerpark in Frankfurt with satellites in Darmstadt and Wiesbaden. One of the sculptures, which can measure up to 30 square meters, is MY-CO SPACE by Prof. Vera Meyer (TU Berlin, Department of Applied and Molecular Biology) and Prof. Sven Pfeiffer (Bochum University of Applied Sciences, Department of Digital Design, Planning and Construction). The spatial “livable” sculpture on display in Frankfurt will be accessible around the clock as one of nine constructed examples of artistically free, visionary, utopian or dystopian ideas for new forms of life and work.
The two artists’ living sculpture places fungi and fungal materials as active agents in the center of a debate regarding future structures and human modes of life. Visitors to MY-CO SPACE, a spatial sculpture that can be furnished and utilized in diverse manners, will be brought into direct contact with the microscopically small yet macroscopically relevant world of mycology by means of various activities.
During the exhibition MY-CO SPACE will be used as a learning station and exhibition space. Here future life with and through fungi can be experienced, reflected on and understood.
The spatial shells will be made of mycelial elements that will be designed using digital design processes that have been adapted to the load-bearing properties of fungal materials. The mycelial elements will be created using regionally available fungus, tinder fungus or Fomes fomentarius, and biotechnological cultivation methods. The fungus will be cultivated on vegetal waste from agricultural and agroforesty operations in Berlin and Brandenburg. The laboratory cultivation process makes it possible to produce solid, stable and extremely light-weight composite materials consisting of both fungus and plants. As soon as this biological material is sufficiently firm, the components will be pieced together on site to create MY-CO SPACE. The interleaved geometry of the structure makes it possible to remove individual components in order to yield openings.
To go along with the exhibition of MY-CO SPACE and the other eight living sculptures there will be a series of events that all together make up a kind of scientific forum under the title “tinyMONDAYS”. The formats will range from lecture and panel discussion, to workshop, film screening and more. Together with such partners as the Museum Angewandte Kunst, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt such subjects will be explored as urban development, contemporary architecture, sustainability and senior living.