Cropley Court, New North Road, London, N1

A purpose built council block. Flats looking out onto a large level grassed area on the left, New North Road and other blocks of flats on either side. The building is serviced by a lift to all floors.You can hear the sounds of the doors opening and closing, the lift engine and air conditioning systems, the distant purr of traffic from the road. You can hear footsteps, neighbours walking up and down the stairs, radios humming above your head.

Over time the sounds cease. No radios playing, no footsteps, no hums from behind the wall. No longer can you hear the fragments of conversations cutting through the ceiling. The dimly lit corridors, walls and corners between the flats are overgrown with soft conic shaped funghi. The funghi have arranged themselves in gridded anechoic patterns spreading across the walls, the floors, the ceilings. They are changing the way the sounds travel through the building, absorbing and eliminating every bit of noise – a natural and makeshift anti noise system that seems to be as good as eggboxes on a recording studio wall.

They flourish. Uncontrolled, inside and outside. A fungal architecture imposed on top of the city. A fungal city. Houses, apartments and offices that fade to a silent fungus form, one building at a time. The home, once again, has become a haven of tranquillity within the overpopulated city.

Excerpt from Plant Fiction by Troika. Now showing at the Science Museum, London