Duration: 2018-2020
Funders: Boverket and Crafoord Foundation

Pulp Faction is a transdisciplinary project at the intersection of microbiology, digital fabrication and architecture that provides the alternative of growing to extraction as material sourcing. These new material systems are produced through biofabrication and digital computation.

Pulp Faction develops methods for 3d printing mycelium composite materials for architectural use. The project employs the transformative power of biology to repurpose abundant by-products of plant fibres into a new class of performative materials for architecture. These are self-supporting, good thermal and acoustic insulators, and simultaneously hydrophobic and hygroscopic.

Such biomaterials represent alternative construction materials that are biodegradable and don't rely on extraction of finite resources or energy-intensive production. Spanning a range of disciplines, Pulp Faction is concerned with the substrate material composition, its integration with living fungus, the process for 3d printing, and ultimately how it is grown into architectural components. The process has been demonstrated through a 2 meter high column, Protomycokion.

Publications

• Pulp Faction: 3d printed material assemblies through microbial biotransformation
  Goidea, A., Floudas, D. & Andréen, D., 2020 Apr 6, Fabricate 2020: Making Resilient Architecture. Burry, J., Sabin, J., Sheil, B. & Skavara, M. (eds.). UCL Press, p. 42-49 8 p. (FABRICATE).
• Transcalar Design: An Approach to Biodesign in the Built Environment
  Goidea, A., Floudas, D. & Andréen, D., 2022 Apr, In: Infrastructures. 7, 4, 50.
• Principles of biological design as a model for biodesign and biofabrication in architecture
  Andréen, D. & Goidea, A., 2022, In: Architecture, Structures and Construction. 2, 4, p. 481-491