En­gage with Fungi

How do we want to live in the fu­ture? How do we take re­spon­si­bil­ity for the fu­ture of the Earth, for our en­vi­ron­ment, for our so­ci­ety? By fac­ing the great chal­lenges of today to­gether. By fus­ing the cre­ativ­ity en­gines of sci­ence, art, and so­ci­ety in order to jointly and trans­dis­ci­pli­nar­ily de­velop vi­sions for a sus­tain­able fu­ture and vi­able paths to­wards it.​The book En­gage with Fungi ex­em­pli­fies such a trans­dis­ci­pli­nary en­deav­our and fo­cuses on col­lab­o­ra­tive re­search on and learn­ing from fungi. Fungi are mas­ter builders, meta­bolic artists and ex­perts in net­work­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion. They teach us that na­ture is dom­i­nated by co­op­er­a­tion across species bound­aries for col­lec­tive ben­e­fit, and help us un­der­stand how lim­ited re­sources can be tapped col­lec­tively. Thus, the book pre­sents net­worked sci­en­tific, artis­tic and civil so­ci­ety re­search pro­jects in the pe­riod 2020 to 2022. Ini­ti­ated by the De­part­ment of Ap­plied and Mol­e­c­u­lar Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy at TU Berlin, fun­gal biotech­nol­ogy merged with the arts, de­sign, ar­chi­tec­ture, and cit­i­zen sci­ence. Through this unique col­lab­o­ra­tion, con­cepts for fun­gal-based bio­ma­te­ri­als could be jointly de­vel­oped, bring­ing a sus­tain­able liv­ing and dwelling within reach.