Closed Loop Printing
5. “Eban Bayer: Are Mushrooms the New Plastic?� http://www.ted.com/talks/eben_bayer_are_mushrooms_the_new_plastic.html, (accessed August 1st 2012)
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The P(E)N House is also a site of manufacturing—each house being fitted with a set amount of high-quality recycled plastic, and a series of robotic appliances designed to print it, melt it down, extrude it, and re-use it to print something new. Algorithm-generated designs are continually selected by users of a public website, and printed when surplus energy is available and an equal amount of plastic has been fed back to the robots. Things metamorphose into one another: tables into chairs, chase lounges into silverware, bookshelves into walls. Matter circulates in a dance of unchoreographed appearances and disappearances. Objects and rooms shape shift. Domesticity is supplemented with the periodic need to adapt. When repetition is required, copies are made by printing molds and letting fungal mycelium grow into them.5 During the winter, snow and ice are poured into the molds, engendering transitory collections of translucent beds, desks, bowls and armchairs.