Interwoven
residential architecture
located in Brunswick, VIC, Australia
Inspired by the diversity, indeterminacy and entanglement of mycelia while interrogating the possibilities of compact living and co-housing, Interwoven addresses the pressing issues of housing affordability, climate change and urban sprawl in Melbourne.
- Diversity: Through tenure-blind design combined with numerous typologies that support a variety of living arrangements, Interwoven embraces the precarity of contemporary housing conditions and the rise of solo-dwellers as an inspiration for diversity within a thriving and resilient co-housing community.
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Indeterminacy: Moveable internal partitions and un-programmed slack spaces allow for the expansion and contraction of living zones, which facilitates an indeterminate architecture that can adapt to short-term and long-term changes.
- Entanglement: The project further promotes an architecture entangled with vegetation through transluscent, multi-layered building envelopes inspired by Japanese shoji screens. These operable polycarbonate layers create intermediate buffer spaces between the public and the private, the inside and the outside, which can be occupied by humans, plants and fungi.
Milano Idrofilica
installation + performance + film
located in Dropcity, Milan, Italy
using polyvinyl alcohol fabric, metal cables, string, stones from site, screws & metal eyelets
designed, constructed and dissolved with Hellen Boje and Hao Sean Liu
A diaphanous tunnel spans across two portals in the vaults below Milan Central Station, serving as a threshold, a passageway, spatial connector and divider. The tensile structure made of water-soluble fabric gradually dissolves as water is sprayed on the surface. As apertures open up, the previously concealed space behind is revealed and made accessible.
A tribute to Milan’s historic and contemporary relationship with water
Fabulous Fungal Fermenting Foundation
>>>>>>>>>>︎<<<<<<<<<<
text, film, scenography
replacing the Maiden’s Tower, Istanbul, Turkey
imagined and published with Michael Du Hoi Ming, 2023
replacing the Maiden’s Tower, Istanbul, Turkey
imagined and published with Michael Du Hoi Ming, 2023
A Foundation, A Cenotaph, A Tower
Based on a “Phantasie”
For Bill Murray
Based on a “Phantasie”
For Bill Murray
Set in the middle of the Borporus in Istanbul, FFFF is the architectural and theatrical crystalisation of a fungal fantasy that questions reason, invites discussions, and catalyses transformations. FFFF challenges the very definition of cleanliness, a fundamentally human ideal. It is a distillation of prominent attitudes of today towards capitalism, globalisation, entanglement, and decay. The tower precipitates fantastic transformations through eight fermentation chambers, each containing its own temperament, questions, and ideas about the world.
AUTHORS’ NOTE
A Foundation, A Cenotaph, A Tower
Based on a “Phantasie”
As we walked by the display window of the little red book kiosk one day, the reflective silver cover of a little book caught our attention. This was how we discovered the Pristine Pilze Polluted Phantasie, written by authors (who are now good friends and collaborators of ours) Wendy Lin, Michael Hoi Ming Du, and Alice.
We chose to use this contemporary surrealist œuvre as the philosophical basis of our project since we are interested in the way it challenges the very definition of cleanliness, a fundamentally human ideal. After unpacking prominent themes of the text such as capitalism, globalisation, entanglement, and decay, we distilled our thoughts and reflections into this
Fabulous Fungal Fermenting Foundation. It precipitates fantastic transformations through eight fermentation chambers, each containing its own temperament, questions, and ideas about the world.
As a result, FFFF is the architectural and theatrical crystalisation of this fungal fantasy that questions reason, invites discussions, and catalyses transformations.
So what do we actually ferment?
The answer is: everything!
coalesce—change—dissolve
Encountering mycelial assemblages through art and music
with Aditya Ryan Bhat
Chinese ink painting on Xuan paper, 2021
Painting and log drum with live-processing, performed by Aditya Ryan Bhat.
This experimental collaboration emerges from a shared fascination with those most collaborative of beings: fungi. The title is taken from a passage in anthropologist Anna Tsing’s book, the Mushroom at the End of the World, in which the author describes the ecological phenomenon of ‘assemblage’. Tsing’s assemblages are ‘open-ended gatherings’, encounters between disparate elements—both living and non-living—, in which indeterminacy and interconnection bring together and remake ways of being.
Fungi are often at the heart of such assemblages; elusive underground networks of mycelium connect forests, enabling communication between organisms, and even forming a bridge between living and non-living beings. Wendy’s artwork takes inspiration from the form of mycelium with its tangle of hyphae, through the use of layering, depth, density, and texture. The music you will hear is both a response to the artwork, and to the original concept we developed on the theme of mycelial connections. In this sense, we seek to present a kind of artistic assemblage in which neither the seen, nor the heard is dominant; but rather the two interact freely to create spontaneous impressions.
kǒu
口
A space with which we are born, a space that senses itself, a space of constant becoming.
conceived with Elsa Despoix and Ella Jonuzi