Inviting Moss is a workshop that invites locals of Woensel-West, Eindhoven to create mental and physical invitations for co-habitation. In the cracks of the urban, mosses are living and thriving.They fill the gaps that human citizens did not design or intent to be inhabited. Yet urban architecture makes home for other species, enabling humans and mosses to live side by side. But who is this fuzzy neighbour? What kinds of spaces and conditions do these mosses thrive in? And what moss teach us?

The workshop participants connect with their human and mossy neighbours by sharing knowledge about and previous encounters with moss. To locate and observe the mosses and their living conditions, the participants are guided to walk around the local playground. Together, a moss-philic composite material is created by merging powdered construction waste with organic off-cuts from the green maintenance service of Eindhoven, re-utilizing the material waste streams of the city. The material, rich in seeds and spores from the local vegetation of Eindhoven, is shaped and placed by the participants with empathy for the mosses’ living conditions and with awareness of the dangers of the maintenance workers’ weed removing tools and practices. A pattern seems to unfold as the participants choose their invitations to imitate or be placed in non-designed cracks and gaps, and stimulates a conversation on the appreciation of the imperfections in urban architecture through emphasizing on non-designed spaces’ inhabitation by other species.

Documentation: Nikola Scheibe