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MUSHROOM
This Week From The Editor

It's rare to find beauty in mushrooms; certainly much less than flowers, designed to be propulsively, riotously beautiful. The beauty of these bulbous, spore-laden buttons is in their resilience, and their ability to pop up unexpectedly, reminding author Anna Tsing of the fleeting pleasures in our current state of indeterminacy and precarity. It is indeed then 'the mushroom at the end of the world' that is both a reason for despair, as well as for hope.

Room for Climate Warriors

Often seen as parasites and invaders, mushrooms even grow on blighted grounds where flowers wouldn't dare. In symbiosis and mutual thriving, these fungal beings leave the soil richer, not caring about 'executive orders' or bills telling them they don't belong in doing so. In foraging mushrooms, you find joy in deriving nourishment from what the verdant tree refused and the land accepted. In foraging mushrooms, you find community and a parable for our environmental predicament in decimated landscapes and permanently altered climates.

This week, mushrooms mirror our biomes and echo their cry for conservation, to bring you tales of resilience and the unhanded joy in precarity. 'It's About Time - The Architecture of Climate Change' juxtaposes climate action and architectural design, underpinning time as a force. The Gaia Communication System offers an exoskeleton with haptics designed to attune one to their environment, while a conversation with architect Kongjian Yu unearths how landscape architecture is used as a survival tool.

Mushrooms precede us and will outlast us—it may very well be a mushroom in the sky that brings an end to the precarity. But Tsing claims that a Matsutake mushroom was one of the first things to sprout from the grounds of post atomic Hiroshima; they probably will be from our hubris as well. The mushroom picker, the lowly forager? Nowhere to be found.

Anmol Ahuja

Liz West on 'Tiered Reflections'
Liz West on 'Tiered Reflections'
See See

The Gaia Communication System's haptic feedback enables ecosystem attunement

05 MIN READ    Read More

Think

nai010 publishers posits 'It's About Time' for architects to drive sustainable changes

14 MIN READ    Read More

Think
Inspire Inspire

In conversation with Kongjian Yu on the spongy future of urban landscapes

14 MIN READ    Read More

Reflect

Workspace Design Show

Date

Feb 26 - 27, 2025

LOCATION

London, United Kingdom

Workspace Design Show

This year's event, themed 'Activate the Senses', will explore how multi-sensory, immersive environments can enhance well-being, productivity and engagement in the workplace. Visitors can look forward to a dynamic showcase of sensory-rich installations, sustainable concepts and cutting-edge collaborations with leading architecture & design firms. The Workspace Design Talks programme will include Alessandro Ranaldi (Foster + Partners), Helen Berresford (Heatherwick Studio) and Cristiano Testi (tp bennett), among others.

Learn More
STIRpad

NEWS

Amelia Stevens' quiet annotations in the 'Species of Tables and Other Pieces'

Amelia Stevens' quiet annotations in the 'Species of Tables and Other Pieces'

07 MIN READ     Read More

Separator

Didi NG Wing Yin on the alchemy, intimacy and 'naturalness' of woodworking

Didi NG Wing Yin on the alchemy, intimacy and 'naturalness' of woodworking

07 MIN READ     Read More

The ambivalence of images

Rexy Tseng's 'Mouthful of Dirty Copper' parses our relationship to pictures of disaster and destruction.

07 MIN READ

Leah Triplett

The ambivalence of images

Tracing the distortion of veracity and specificity, Tseng stresses the thingness of painting in his play with texture and brushwork.

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