How to grow a knitted building?
Prototype: The Living Room
Following the first successful Prototype BioKnit researches from Newcastle have created The Living Room by developing the techniques to grow mycelium-textile hybrids further.
The Living Room is part of More with Less: Reimagining Architecture for a Changing World, the inaugural exhibition at the Farrell Centre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which offers new visions for architecture in the face of the climate emergency.
The Living Room is a bio-fabricated architecture that is grown using locally available waste materials.
It is composed of Herdwick wool, a breed of sheep native to the Lake District in north-west England, a mix of sawdust and wastepaper from local mills, and mycelium spores. The use of waste materials benefits regional industries and demonstrates a means to dramatically reduce the environmental impact of construction, whilst allowing us to reimagine the spaces that we inhabit. Our work is a reaction to rigid, hard, permanent buildings, instead we have created a soft, cosy, snug internal space with thick sculpted walls, which can be composted when no longer required.
The Living Room demonstrates that responding to the climate emergency does not mean ‘business as usual’ – it means doing things in fundamentally different ways. In this case we demonstrate how truly sustainable architecture may be almost unrecognisable and this transition provides an opportunity to rethink how we build (grow), maintain (nurture) and inhabit the built environment.
Research Team
This research is part of the More or Less exhibition in the Farrell Centre and developed with support by the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE).
HBBE is funded by Research England and is a joint initiative between Newcastle University and Northumbria University.
The Living Room was created by the Living Textiles Research Group following months of research, development and large-scale biofabrication by Jane Scott, Ben Bridgens, Dilan Ozkan, Romy Kaiser, Oliver Perry and Armand Agraviador, with help from Layla van Ellen and Aileen Hoenerloh.
Featured in
BBC News – Read the article here
The Guardian – Read the article here
Dezeen – Read the article here
World Architecture Festival 2023 – Read the article here
Find more related projects from the Living Textiles Group here.