Mushroom field experiment

Film stills of Dante Bini’s experimental ‘Mushroom field’ site, Emilia-Romagna region, Italy. A collaborative research trip between Gilly Booth, Chris Horrocks and Stephen Barber in 2016. Supported by a grant from Kingston University.

Architect Dante Bini exhibited his ‘Binishells’ in Expo 1970 in Osaka, Japan. At the same time he designed ‘La Cupola’ for Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti within Costa Paradiso, a tourist destination in Sardinia. The ‘Mushroom Field’ site, a 1970s utopian vision set against a backdrop of the first moon landing, widespread anti-war protests, and environmentalism. It was a time when architects experimented with radical designs as an instrument of political, social and cultural critique. Bini in particular was interested in building structures on the moon (‘Early Lunar Bases’), and creating levitating cities: the TRY megastructure concept, an unrealised project commissioned by Shimizu Corporation for Tokyo Bay.