A trippy trend in building technology has taken top billing at the 6th annual Tallinn Architecture Biennale in the Baltic nation of Estonia.

Using 3D-printing technology, the Australian team of Simulaa and Natalie Alima has taken a timber-frame formwork imbued with mycelial fibers that grow to envelop the structure, allowing it to decay along an algorithmic process that, in fitting with the competition’s mandate, biologically expresses the slow passage of time.

“This project curates an uneasy alliance between biological transformations and the performance of a generative algorithm,” the design team said in a press statement. “Through this measured process, the project seeks to heighten this state of flux, expressed in the object’s material decay that is in tension between emerging and eroding form.”

Comprised of waste material from local timber industries like offcuts and sawdust, the hut’s inherent biodegradable state comments on the dichotomies of material and was inspired by the reflections Martin Heidegger made from his Black Forest Hut. 

The Australian submission joins other noteworthy installations as examples of a building material that is only now beginning to be studied as an alternative to everything from concrete to cardboard and has proven applications as an area for advancement in the field of sustainable design. 

Meant to stimulate a working relationship between local and foreign architects, the Tallinn Architecture Biennale TAB 2022 is curated by past winners Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham, Soomeen Hahm Design, and Igor Pantic. RMIT professor Roland Snooks served on the three-person jury panel that examined 119 applicants before selecting Burlasite as the winner. The exhibition will remain in place in front of the Estonian Center for Architecture until its run ends in 2024.