New York may be known for awe-inspiring buildings such as the Chrysler and the Empire State Building — but they've got nothing on a new set of towers that’s set to spring up this summer.
The complex, known as Hy-Fi, will be built primarily from organic material — a combination of chopped-up corn husks and fungi (specifically mycelium, the vegetative part of fungus) mixed together in brick-like molds.
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The resulting organic bricks will be used to create three towers. At the top, a smaller set of bricks will be coated in a reflective film will increase the amount of sunlight the fungi receive — thereby expediting the building process.
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and MoMA PS1 announced that they have selected Hy-Fi, designed by David Benjamin, to be built in MoMA PS1’s outdoor installation space in Queens, New York.
The towers aren't actually for living in — they're temporary structures designed to provide shade, seating, and water. But they represent a huge leap forward for building materials.
“It is the first sizable structure to claim near-zero carbon emissions in its construction process and, beyond recycling, it presents itself as being 100% compostable,” said Pedro Gadanho, the curator of MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design, in a press release. “Recurring to the latest developments in biotech, it reinvents the most basic component of architecture—the brick—as both a material of the future and a classic trigger for open-ended design possibilities.”
MoMA and MoMA PS1 selected Benjamin’s design out of pool of contestants from their Young Architects Program, an annual series of competitions for emerging architects to build projects using MoMA PS1’s public exhibition space. Participants had to make sure their structures could be disassembled without waste when the installation came to an end.
Hy-Fi is set to open in late June.
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