FUNGI: Anarchist Designers

You are cordially invited to a lecture by Feifei Zhou:

Date: 16^th September 2025

Time: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

Venue: SDE4, Level 5 Forum, DOA, National University of Singapore, 8 Architecture Dr, Singapore 117564

SILA CPD Points: 2

FUNGI: Anarchist Designers

What does it really mean to “design with fungi”? In recent years, fungi have captured the public imagination, often portrayed as friendly, tasty, or easy to play with for human use. In the design and architecture worlds, mycelium has become a trendy new material, celebrated much like concrete in the 1950s or plastic in the 1970s. Despite this exciting enthusiasm, these treatments reduce fungi to just another resource for human goals, overlooking their complex ecological roles and long evolutionary history as powerful agents in their own right.

FUNGI, Anarchist Designers shows you a different fungal trajectory by viewing them as anarchist designers. From destroying the entire plantations to wiping out species of animals, fungi can be a dangerous threat to humanity if we underestimate them. But they can also be our allies if we care to understand and learn from their own designs. Showing a unique set of research-based collaborations between scholars, on the one hand, and artists and designers, on the other, this exhibition tell true stories around the world to show us how fungi can lead the way as designers.

Speaker Bio

Feifei Zhou is a Chinese-born spatial and visual designer, and the founder of spatial design studio terriStories. Her work explores spatial, cultural, and ecological impacts of the industrialised built and natural environment. Using narrative-based spatial analysis, she collaborates extensively with social and natural scientists to translate empirical observations and scientific research into visual representations that aim to both clarify intricate more-than-human relations and open new questions.

This talk focuses on the upcoming exhibition titled ‘FUNGI: Anarchist Designers’, curated by anthropologist Anna Tsing and architect and artist Feifei Zhou at the Nieuwe Instituut which is happening from 21 November 2025 to 9 August 2026.