Biodegradable Architecture: Finite Construction for Endless Futures

The now defunct National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) states that a brownfield is a large piece of land that has become contaminated, and subsequently abandoned, due to past commercial and industrial activities. While brownfields have a dubious legacy, a transformative potential exists from a social, economic, and—most of all—environmental perspective. Utilizing Paul Stamet’s exploration of myco-technologies which has demonstrated new ways of rehabilitating degraded landscapes—along with ideas of biomimicry, this thesis seeks to study the interrelationship between architecture, landscape, and decay. The concept of biodegradable when applied to architecture becomes a manifestation of this interrelationship. Biodegradable architecture suggests simultaneously both construction and demolition. The project explores the idea of a permanent building that produces impermanent and ephemeral architecture. These ideas manifest themselves as a factory for biodegradable architecture, where mycobricks are manufactured.