- Recon-Celium
- September 2021
- Warming 2021 – Architecture for a Changed World – Entrant
- Simon Caufield, Catherine He, Douglas Sharpe
Long ago, it was known that the symbiosis of trees and fungi created a living network that is able to sense, communicate and store knowledge about the environment. I study the fungi and trees that grow on the land where once stood cities. Through years of failed attempts, we finally discovered a way to communicate with the land, trees, and living organisms. The symbiosis between humans and fungi allowed us to create a living interface that allows humans to sense, communicate, and learn from forests. This was the beginning of how humanity began to build resilience, form relationships, and truly begin to mend our broken past and learn how to protect our future.
The forests are libraries of knowledge and memories. Vast underground archives carved by roots of the trees now hold the knowledge of our people and planet. We now reside in unison with our ancestors amongst the trees. Their knowledge can be sensed by every person. This is where we grow collectively. Through generations of symbiotic existence and knowledge sharing, human society slowly matured in its awareness, understanding, and the treatment of the natural environment. Living side by side in coexistence, we have cultivated a way to protect nature and trust that nature’s wisdom will protect human kind for generations to come.
Our world is changing, natural disasters are a common news headline, mother nature is angry and rightly so! RECON-CELIUM seeks to understand mother nature, rather than depleting her resources. The solution is resilience, reconciliation and understanding.
Fungi are made up of microscopic, root-like threads called mycelium. Mycelium form an intricate underground network, connecting the roots of plants and trees in an area together, allowing them to communicate and transfer water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals. It is through this mycelium that trees and other plants can communicate with each other. RECON-CELIUM seeks to reconcile with our ecosystem through the utilization of the mycelium network. The proposal imagines a way for human-kind to communicate with nature, sharing knowledge and memories, in order to save our planet from vanishing before our eyes.
The architecture is formed by a synthesis of man-made and “living” materials. This proposal seeks to let nature create and carve natural forms underground – the ability to understand the systems of forests allows humans to nurture and guide it’s growth to create living structures and spaces. Tree roots help hold up the main cathedral atrium space. In the surrounding soil, extensive networks of tree roots and mycelium form the library’s “stacks” storing the knowledge of the forest. Through a mycelium interface, visitors can retrieve information and engage with the ecosystem. Digging deeper allows water to feed the roots, sustain plat life and offer respite to both human and animal visitors to the space.