Artist Ivan Henriques presents Ecoshroom, a research project created during his Machine Wilderness residency, organised by Zone2Source with FoAM at ARTIS Royal Zoo in 2022.

Ecoshroom is an innovative project with an out-of-the-box approach to life in urban areas. The project underlines the need to bring agriculture back to the cities and encourage the merging of natural and technological systems for a more sustainable future.

Ecoshroom unveils the invisible processes of nutrients and carbon exchange from plants and mycorrhizae. It does so by deploying a custom-built AI that analyses the communication between the mycorrhizae and the plants. The installation engages visitors with a visual datastream as well as sounds that represent the plant and fungi communication. Visitors can also participate in the communication chain by eating food and throwing left-overs in a compost basket, thus contributing to the functioning of the installation.

What if plants are the brain of a building?

Ecoshroom shows the possibilities for innovative approach to architecture design: creating an autonomous system, guided by the cognition of plants and fungi, together with artificial intelligence.

When Ecoshroom installation is set up, the building from the exhibition space is incorporated in the installation. The sensors placed on the plants and fungi generate signals that are analysed by the Ecoshroom AI, which can then adjust the atmosphere such as temperature, light, co2 and humidity according to the organisms needs.

Ecoshroom aims to provoke discussions on sustainability, climate change, and biodiversity.

With the world’s population surpassing 8 billion, transformative narratives are crucial, addressing climate change, food security, and biodiversity. The continuing vast rates of deforestation and rampant overuse of fertilisers has depleted soils and ecosystems, threatening biodiversity.

Ecoshroom envisions a harmonious coexistence between plants, fungi and humans through technological innovation.

While working at Microbia during Machine Wilderness, Ivan Henriques met professor Toby Kiers (evolutionary biologist at V.U.) and his research on mycorrhiza, a cohabitation of fungi and plants. For the resulting proposal, he recently received the S+T+ARTS EU grant for Hungry Eco-Cities with which he will develop Ecoshroom over the next year in collaboration with various international knowledge partners.