Yueyue Su

Year 2 MArch

Lichenland

Experimental Bio-Based Centre
Glencoe, Highlands, Scotland

Lichenland recasts the National Trust visitor centre at Glencoe as a living laboratory where architecture, science and slow-growing lichens co-evolve in changing climates. Scotland has lost 43 per cent of its species in the past decade, with more than half of lichen taxa now threatened; the project treats these sensitive pioneers as barometers of a warming, wetter climate.

A timber–mycelium extension sprouts parametric panels whose geometry is scripted from lichen hydration and growth patterns. When rain, mist or intense sunlight sweeps the gorge, the panels and their irregular forms help harvest moisture and shade nurseries and growing surfaces. The envelope’s cultivations & bio agents help capture CO₂, turning the façade into an active carbon exchanger as well as shelter for both human and nonhuman inhabitants.

Inside, an open lab, dye studio and craft workshops invite visitors to cultivate, pigment and weave with lichen under the guidance of ecologists. Elevated trails lead to restoration plots along the temperate rainforest edge where bryophytes and indicator species are reintroduced. By folding human activity into the metabolic cycles of fungus and cyanobacteria, Lichenland frames architecture as a patient partner in ecological regeneration.