Mycoform Surface is a Finalist in Spark Design Awards

Mycoform Surface: Multi-Curved Mycelium Mushroom Structure
Principal Investigators: Mitchell Joachim, Oliver Medvedik, Melanie Fessel 
Team: Maria Aiolova, Ellen Jorgenson, Shruti Grover, James Schwartz, Josue Ledema, Tania Doles, Philip Weller, Greg Pucillo, Shivina Harjani, Jesse Hull, Peter Zhang, Matthew Tarpley, Amanda O’Keefe, Bahar Avanoglu, Ipek Avanoglu, Brent Solomon, Pedro Galindo-Landeira, Yinan Li, Sophie Fabbri.
Sponsor: Ecovative
http://www.sparkawards.com/galleries/index.cfm?entry=4ADF15CC-E656-4860-B77D88B06852AD2C

BRIC TV Terreform One: Designing for Climate Change | #BHeard

New Monograph - Terreform ONE Active 3,650 Days

BOOK OUT SOON!!!

POLITICO - Terreform ONE Bio City - Interview

Bio City- Terreform ONE’s Mitchell Joachim, Vivian Kuan, Melanie Fessel, and Oliver Medvedik push the boundaries of architecture with experimental materials such as living trees and engineered animal tissue — to design future cities that merge with nature.  http://www.politico.com/magazine/video/2015/11/bio-city.html

Cricket Shelter - Edible Insect Modular Farm and Habitat

The continuous impact of climate dynamics, armed conflicts, non-stop urbanization and economic upheavals present a distinct need for a hybrid architectural topology to deliver parallel solutions for food and shelter in each distressed region. This is a dual-purpose shelter and modular insect farm bounded into one structure. It’s intended for the impending food crisis, where people will need access to good sources of alternative protein, as raising livestock is not possible at our current rate of consumption and resource extraction. The United Nations has mandated insect sourced protein is a major component to solving global food distribution problems.  This arguably impacts the diets of all peoples across the globe.

In an advanced economic setting, this farm can introduce a sophisticated and ultra-sanitary method of locally harvesting insects for the production of cricket flour in fine cuisine recipes. It can also serve to be a new topology for a specialty restaurant, eatery, storehouse or similar architectural program. Introducing crickets into the modern American/ European diet is not a simple task, but there is precedent. For example, a few decades ago American’s did not wish to eat raw fish. Yet positive change materialized after sushi was introduced on a culturally refined and hygienic level. The same kind of approach needs to be embedded in the cultivation of crickets to achieve the cleanliness, quality, and purity of the farm-to-table system.  Over two billion people eat insects every day; it’s time to reintroduce them into the diets of the remaining population.

Raising cattle, pigs, and chicken for meat products all require immense amounts of fresh water. Harvesting insects for food typical takes three hundred times less water for the same amount of protein. Our project aims to maximize access to nutrient resources and to deal with and support local communities in anticipation of post-disaster scenarios. This also targets societal upgrading strategies in both
developed and developing countries as the temporary shelter easily coverts to a permanent farming system/ eatery after the crisis has dissipated.
 

Structurally, the shelter can be minimized into easily manufactured and replicable elements such as a simple CNC plywood archway with linked off-the-shelf plastic containers as infill surface. The current version of the structure is more customized to account for solar orientation, airflow and varied spatial programs internally. A computational model was used to parametrically align all of the individual containers to match the archway splines. Each pre-ordered container was modified to add ventilation screens, flexible insect sacks, locally controlled louvers, and permeable feeder ports with rotating locking mechanisms. The wind quill ventilation component magnifies the sound of cricket chirping in columns of vibrating air.     

The scheme has a multipronged focus on international hunger solutions, sustainable food distribution methods and modular compact architecture. A project of this type is built for areas in calamitous need both present and future. We understand that our role in the complex system of global cooperation is to seek holistic solutions that integrate interdisciplinary knowledge and citizen participation for shelter and subsistence farming. It is essential to understand the physical, social and cultural substrate of developing territories in which food and refuge is simultaneously critical. 

Credits: Terreform ONE, Mitchell Joachim (PI), Maria Aiolova, Felipe Molina, Matthew Tarpley, Melanie Fessel, Jiachen Xu, Lissette Olivares, Cheto Castellano, Shandor Hassan, Christian Hamrick, Ivan Fuentealba, Sung Moon, Kamila Varela, Yucel Guven, Chloe Byrne, Miguel Lantigua-Inoa
Sponsor: Art Works for Change.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/4g44p39nuk14hcc/TerreformONE_CricketShelter.pdf 

New York, I Love You, But…Exhibition Terreform ONE

Exhibition Terreform ONE, POST CARBON CITY-STATE: Rezoned Circular Economy

New York, I Love You, But…

November 5, 2015 - January 26, 2016, The Gallatin Galleries, NYU

Curator’s Statement

All the arguments against it are right: too crowded, too loud, too spread out, too expensive. But also: too exciting, too energetic, too fast, too much. All superlatives. New York, I Love You, But… is a glimpse at the superlative that is New York; an audience to the internal conversation of the person pressed against the subway door, smelling something unidentifiable on the journey home from some unique and  wonderful New York moment. It is a glance at the instances of excess and intimacy, humanity and wonder that define being a New Yorker.  “You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now,” (Colson Whitehead) because being a New Yorker is as much about the frenetic thrust into the present (and by that we mean the future), as it is about harboring nostalgia for a New York that’s eternally slipping away. CBGBs or Shea Stadium, Ebbets field or the Twin Towers; affordable rent or addicts in Times Square: all gone. What is lost is our city, the city that each of us individually makes through momentary encounters, reflections in the window of a cab, panoramic vistas we didn’t know existed, but became ours because that is where we fell in love, were held up, got away, and all the other endless events that create the place we call home.

https://youtu.be/YUhDLFygBQE

Eyebeam: Spilling Over: New York 2050 with Maria Aiolova

Nancy Nowacek, Mary Mattingly, Eve Mosher, Marina Zurkow and Maria Aiolova in conversation as part of Outside/In, Eyebeam at the Seaport, October 28 7:00-9:00PM http://www.eyebeam.org/events/spillingover

Lawrence Tech Lecture w/ Melanie Fessel + Nurhan Gokturk, Terreform ONE

November19th at LAWRENCE TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY School of Architecture Lecture with Melanie Fessel + Nurhan Gokturk, Terreform ONE
http://www.ltu.edu/architecture_and_design/lectures.asp 

Brooklyn Magazine with New Lab and Terreform ONE

Inside New Lab: How the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Innovation Hub Is Shaping the Future 

by Carey Dunne

Terreform ONE- Who they are and what they do:

Cofounded by Mitchell Joachim and Maria Aiolova, Terreform ONE [Open Network Ecology] is a non-profit experimental green design laboratory creating concepts to advance cities across architecture, industrial design, and landscape ecology. Think buildings made of living trees, houses made of meat, and chairs grown from mycelium.

The perks of working at New Lab:
“There is no office space like this. We’re in the center of a high-tech elf workshop. We’re a combination of a coworking space and a maker community, and we get to collaborate with people in other companies with vastly different backgrounds and skill sets.”

What’s coming next:
“For years, we’ve been working on the ‘Post Carbon City State,’ a speculative model for a future Manhattan with zero carbon footprint, made entirely of green stuff: a light rail instead of cars, buildings with sides covered in plants for better air quality, etc.,” Joachim says.

Coolest recent projects:
“The Plug-In Ecology Urban Farm Pod, a giant sphere in which you can grow food in urban areas (in apartments, on balconies or rooftops),” Terreform ONE cofounder Mitchell Joachim says. “With arduino controllers connected to an app, you can check up on how your kale is ready to eat or tomatoes aren’t yet ripe.”
http://www.bkmag.com/2015/09/29/inside-new-lab-how-the-brooklyn-navy-yards-innovation-hub-is-shaping-the-future/

Politico Magazine at Terreform ONE Filming Today!

Terrefrom ONE, 1st Place International Architecture Awards in Urban Design

Terreform ONE has WON 1st Place for the International Architecture Awards (IAA) 2015 in Urban Design.

Project Title: Resilient Water Infrastructure. 

Jury included: Jing Liu (SO-IL), Preston Scott Cohen (USA), Keith Griffiths (Chairman, Aedas), Weichi Chen (Perkins Eastman), Gurjit Singh Matharoo (India).

http://www.architecturepodium.org/portfolio/resilient-water-infrastructure-terreform-one/

Bio-Motown Detroit with Terreform ONE

CRITPraX with Master Practitioners; Mitchell Joachim, Melanie Fessel, Nurhan Gokturk of Terreform ONE at Lawrence Technological University (LTU) working on Bio-Motown Detroit: Unlimited Life Cycle Ecotariums for Urban Space.
 http://criticalpractice.ltu.edu/?page=projects&id=terreform-one-context

Mycoform Surface: Multi-Curved Mycelium Mushroom Structure at Terreform ONE

WHY GROW A SURFACE? These prototypes for a mycoform surface system occupy the intersection of parametric CAD design and synthetic biology. Their multi-curved shapes are designed and cut digitally, but the segments are grown from strains of fungi into the specific 3D geometries of the piece. Mycoform is a product grown from ordinary biological matter and added to precise compacted forms of inert waste. We use polypore fungal species (in this case the fungus Ganoderma lucidum) that possess enzymes to readily digest a wide variety of cellulose based agricultural byproducts. The internal filler is made up of mycelia substrate, a combination of discarded wood chips, gypsum, oat bran, which is consumed by mycelia and then hardened into a tough, durable functional material. The external skin is bacteria cellulose. The mycelia substrate and bacterial cellulose integrate to become a hard biopolymer that is suitable for architectural applications. This low-tech, low energy process is pollution free, and contains a low embodied energy as part of a local ecosystem. The technology is easily transferable to the developing world. At the end of the useful product life cycle, Mycoform can be composted and safely reintroduced back into the environment, where it can be naturally biodegraded.

Credits: Terreform ONE + Genspace 
Principal Investigators: Mitchell Joachim, Oliver Medvedik, Melanie Fessel 
Team: Maria Aiolova, Ellen Jorgenson, Shruti Grover, James Schwartz, Josue Ledema, Tania Doles, Philip Weller, Greg Pucillo, Shivina Harjani, Jesse Hull, Peter Zhang, Matthew Tarpley, Amanda O’Keefe, Bahar Avanoglu, Ipek Avanoglu, Brent Solomon, Pedro Galindo-Landeira, Yinan Li, Sophie Fabbri.
Sponsor: Ecovative