Funghi Lab {Genk, 2016}
How can the circular economy be put into practice in a local context, starting from the existing local skills?
Funghi Lab was an exploratory process of designing, prototyping and testing a system to produce, distribute and market mushrooms from waste (resources) in Genk. In several cities have the potential of growing food based on organic waste material has already been explored. Some of these possibilities were concretely experimented with and tested in Genk. During this experiment, existing tools and techniques were used and brought together in a new system adapted to the context of Genk, facilitated in a series of labs with local partners.
Photo by Kristof Vrancken
During MANUFACTUUR 3.0, together with Ben Hagenaars and Fungimama, we designed a system to grow and market mushrooms in three phases and in collaboration with local actors: (1) the collection of fresh coffee grounds that are abundant in the neighbourhood of Winterslag, (2) the production and (3) the distribution of the mushrooms. The main ambition of Funghi Lab is to support local actors in designing and testing different processes of producing, distributing and marketing mushrooms based on their skills. At MANUFACTUUR 3.0, all the Fughi Lab experiments will be made open source, which means that the results will be shared within the community to develop them further.
Modular bicycles by N55.
