This thesis reconceptualises subterranean living by adopting mycelium as a methodological framework. Inspired by the growth logic of fungal hyphae, the research proposes a new way of understanding and shaping underground environments—one that mirrors the decentralised intelligence of mycelial networks.

Mycelium’s ability to sense, adapt, and navigate towards resources through shared information offers a generative model for how underground spaces can form, evolve, and respond to human needs. Instead of fixed architectural plans, space is treated as a living organism—growing in response to necessity, shrinking in retreat, and constantly negotiating new scales and boundaries.

This approach reframes navigation, habitation, and memory underground as dynamic processes shaped by collective behaviour and survival. Life and death are mapped through these invisible paths: the flow of energy, the search for sustenance, and the burial of forgotten zones. The thesis speculates on a future where subterranean communities do not merely occupy space, but grow it—transforming tunnels, voids, and chambers into adaptive, interconnected sanctuaries shaped by the very intelligence of nature’s oldest network.