In the United Kingdom, architect Maria Vergopoulou proposed and designed a micro home called “Cocoon BioFloss” made from extremely fine bioplastic fibres, reminiscent of candy floss, aka cotton candy. Her design was among the top three winners for the Dezeen X MINI Living Future Urban Home competition which called on readers to design a home for 100 years in the future.
The contest asked readers to consider the challenges that cities will face over the next century and to propose innovative solutions for urban homes to overcome these challenges.
Through her design, Vergopoulou imagined a future where modern building materials would become incredibly scarce. She suggested that this could lead to a new DIY movement, where people would grow vegetables to produce bioplastic, which they would use to build their own cocoon-like homes.
Vergopoulou told Westminster University, her alma mater, that “This design was the outcome of rigorous physical and computational experimentation, focused on the combination of bioplastic with various weaving patterns. The ambition was to create a resistant and environmental friendly building method, available for everyone to reproduce. The project was focused on the process of making, creating a manual for the construction of a prototype house in a future community of scarcity.”