Bags of old coffee grounds hang in the dank dressing rooms of an abandoned Rotterdam water park, growing oyster mushrooms. Two men turned the former Tropicana space, an old teen hangout, into the perfect damp, dim environment for their business, making use of the structure while the city council decides what to do with it. ‘RotterZwam’ rents the building on an anti-squat lease and have transformed it into a fascinating example of adaptive reuse and urban farming.

Tropicana is fairly infamous among Rotterdam locals, but closed after the former owner went bankrupt in 2010. The space had been plagued with problems, from hygiene to sexual assault. It sat empty until Siemen Cox and mark Slegers, RotteZwam’s owners, realized it looked like a giant greenhouse.

Though they hope that central glassed-in space – formerly the pool – will eventually become a greenhouse, for now, they’re making use of the dressing rooms and basement, which offer ideal conditions for fungal growth. The crew hangs bags of coffee grinds from the old Tropicana clothes hangers, and before long, they sprout oyster mushrooms.

They collect the coffee from local cafes, transport it in their carrier bicycle, and give the compost to worms to create an extremely low-waste operation. The produce about 20-50kg of mushrooms every week, and sell it to local restaurants, bakeries and food trucks. They also offer DIY mushroom-growing kits.

“Cities like Rotterdam produce nothing but waste and commuters,” they say in an interview with Vice’s Munchies. “This entertainment park represents that perfectly – we build things and, when we don’t want them anymore, we need others to clean it up, to sweep up our garbage. That’s not how nature works, though – in nature wast doesn’t exist. In this building we hardly ever buy a thing, because eery material or nail is already here.”

A new 125,000-square-foot science complex to be built outside Cairo will combine research, learning and museum facilities in a future-focused structure designed by competition-winning architects.

Architects Weston Williamson+Partners beat Zaha Hadid Architects to secure the role of lead designer on this forward-thinking Science City complex. Their plans include a planetarium, observation tower, workshop rooms and conference facilities in addition to spaces dedicated to scientific research and development.

The competition brief called for a future-oriented, state-of-the-art interactive science museum for the new century, and “a set of buildings and spaces that must be inspiring on the outside and motivating and exciting on the inside to visitors and employees alike” – it attracted nearly 500 submissions from architects around the world.

The circular footprint is filled with umbrella-shaped protrusions serving to define spaces and paths while providing shelter from the Egyptian heat. While currently located in a semi-remote location, the design is intended to form part of a larger regional master plan for redefining and expanding Egypt’s capital city.

Of their victory, the architects said: “We are proud to have won. Needless to say that Egypt has a unique cultural heritage, but we were also attracted by the ambition of the project, clearly expressed through the brief. We look forward to developing the design and creating something worthy for Egypt’s future generations.”

Turning agricultural waste and fungal mycelium into construction materials, this do-it-yourself kit lets you grow your own compostable bio-plastic objects, from packaging furniture to surf boards and architectural building blocks.

Providing a natural alternative to synthetic options, Ecovative’s Mushroom Materials line competes on cost with petroleum-based equivalents and can be shaped in all kinds of ways using custom and reusable molds.

Their latest creation is this home Grow It Yourself kit – they will ship you the organic components (a mixture of crop waste, like corn husks and stalks, and the vegetative part of mushroom fungus). Upon receipt, you can wait and leave things in a dry dormant state, or add water and fit the mixture into a mold to build whatever you want – nature and time take care of the rest.

So far, Mushroom Materials have been used to make everything from award-winning architectural creations (using blocks made out of organic matter) to biodegradable surf boards, flower pots, lamps and other everyday objects.

From Evocative: “We grow materials made from agricultural byproducts and mushroom mycelium. Mycelium is a natural, self-assembling glue, digesting crop waste to produce cost-competitive and environmentally responsible materials that perform. Our large-scale grow factories are truly revolutionary. We harness the power of nature – the cleanest technology on Earth, eliminating the pollution generated across the petroleum-based plastics supply chain.”