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natural habitat cold spring home exterior

Metropolis Editors, Natural Habitat, sustainability, sustainable architecture

METROPOLIS Introduces Natural Habitat, a Sustainable Homes Video Series

The series debuts with a tour of a tranquil upstate New York retreat designed with Passive House principles.

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Julian Camilo Trujillo Morales student project, rendering of a workspace, dance studio, thinking space and more
Project: Framing Solitude

April 6, 2026

Mycelium Moldings: Shaping Space Through Change

METROPOLIS Future100 2026 honoree Julian Camilo Trujillo Morales investigates yuca-based biopolymers.

By: Metropolis Editors

Julian Camilo Trujillo Morales, a graduate interior design student at Parsons School of Design, is rethinking permanence in interior spaces. For Morales, interiors are living systems shaped by human and nonhuman forces, where time and use leave visible traces that are not flaws but evidence of life, labor, and ongoing negotiation.

Julian Camilo Trujillo Morales
Parsons School of Design, The New School

His winning thesis, Time as a Material Practice, questions architecture’s cultural fixation on permanence and perfection. Rather than erasing wear, Morales treats maintenance and repair as integral material processes, using tracing, casting, and photographic documentation to understand how rust, abrasion, and moisture shape spatial experience. 

Drawing and diagram of yuca-based biopolymers made of tuber starch, pulp and skin
Julian Camilo Trujillo Morales explores yuca-based biopolymers—made of the tuber’s starch, pulp, and skin—as the foundation for natural wall surfaces, letting the material change, age, and respond to environmental conditions over time.
b&w drawing of mycelium growing from built environment
Project: Mycelium Moldings

Morales extends this exploration in his work Yuca/Cassava Starch, in which he observes the natural transformations of biopolymer-based wall surfaces, allowing form and meaning to emerge from the material itself rather than imposed design expectations. In Mycelium Moldings, he cultivates fungal networks as sustainable alternatives to PVC trim, producing lightweight, heat-stabilized moldings that rethink a conventional architectural component through renewable, biological fabrication.

“Camilo Trujillo Morales redefines interior design by framing impermanence as a form of care and continuity,” says Michele Gorman, former director of the MFA Interior Design program at Parsons. “His work uses experimental documentation and material agency to reveal how interiors are continually reshaped by time, labor, and nonhuman agents.”

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