Photo: Columbia GSAPP faculty profile.
David Benjamin
David Benjamin holds a BA in Social Studies from Harvard University and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University (2005). He founded The Living, his architecture and research practice, in 2006, and is an Associate Professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), where he directs the Living Architecture Lab and teaches design studios and seminars on carbon-conscious design. In the summer of 2014, working with Ecovative Design (bricks) and Arup (structural engineering), Benjamin designed Hy-Fi, a temporary tower built at MoMA PS1 from mycelium-grown bricks — winner of the 2014 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program and a Holcim Awards Bronze (North America, 2014–2015 cycle).
The Living is among the most widely cited examples of architecture treating biological growth processes as a legitimate manufacturing method rather than a formal or aesthetic reference — Hy-Fi in particular remains a standard reference point in discussions of biofabricated construction materials more than a decade after it was built and composted.
Hy-Fi is one of the clearest public demonstrations of architecture's Grow capability: a structure whose primary material was cultivated through a fungus's own metabolic process rather than cast, extruded, or fired, and whose end of life was composting rather than demolition.