As you walk through a forest you often notice many animals, trees, and plants, but what about the small and seemingly insignificant things hidden in the soil? Those who are curious enough to get a closer look find a world that belongs to beetles, ants, and toads. Clusters of life proliferate the forest floor, where scavengers and decomposers thrive. What if this world could be magnified, and allow us to take on the perspective of an insect?
Magnified Forest Floor recreates one such microcosm hidden in the underbrush and reimagines it for the scale of the human body. Based on the form of the oyster mushroom, leaping columns and canopies once only millimeters tall become large enough to walk through. The delicate gills characterizing the mushroom underbelly take the form of arcing glue-laminated beams that spring outwards and upwards. By using a limited number of radii and only varying beam length, programmatic and formal complexity is achieved without compromising constructability. Some mushrooms grow large enough to inhabit, others are just large enough for a seat. Together, the network creates spaces for play, performance, conversation, meditation. Steel ties pull the structure together and also serve as ladder rungs, allowing one to move through and over the pavilion as well as around it. A translucent membrane - reminiscent of the smooth oyster mushroom cap - serves as additional protection for ambitious climbers, as well as a shading device for those below.
The final stage of the project is in some ways a new beginning for these oversized fungi. Spores, which are essential for the propagation of new mushrooms, fall from the timber canopy. In fact, these spores are suspended in the eaves of the mushroom caps. Each builder creates a unique ceramic "spore", which can serve as a light source, wind chime, hanging garden, or whatever else the builders imagine. In this way the project is stamped with individual signatures from the makers, bringing the mushrooms to life.
