In a potential redirection towards an ecological worldview, the environment and landscape design can play a catalytic role in rethinking the way we perceive reality, within the transition to a sphere of biocentrism.
The study and comprehension of living systems can assist and enhance the effort to redefine the human within the natural ecosystem, providing design information at different scales of the built environment, while involving the principles of systemic approach, circular and metabolic processes, but also the appearance of the ephemeral dimension.
At the intersection of design, materials science, amateur and professional experimentation and the research for sustainable materials and production methods, grown materials are making their appearance, like mycelium, the one being explored in the present work. Mycelium, the filamentous plant part of the fungi, is being explored as a potential biomaterial, sparking a revision of the conventional design and construction methods, as it introduces new subjects of a material-centered approach, through co-designing with the living.
Initiating from the view of mycelium as a decomposer, the project is aiming to the creation of a "node" within the urban "metabolic" network, where a multitude of material and spiritual flows will intersect, affecting the health of the wider urban whole, with steps towards an energy, material and food autonomy and ecology.
Myco360 is "knitted" in the University Square of Volos, and "grows" by decomposing local organic waste, in an attempt to develop local closed loop systems of material, nutrient and social flows intersections. Myco360 is seeking and exploring ways of co-production, "regeneration" and "cultivation" of a culture of care and coexistence with the living ecosystem and food self-sufficiency, along with resource, practices and knowledge exchange.
