MADE+MYCELIUM_Project Documentation

MADE + MYCELIUM

Project description Made+Mycelium is a Christmas Pop-up store for eco brand Seed&Sprout. It features a series of furniture and functional objects made with mycelium (the root system of mushrooms). This biological material creates a unique effect, which embodies the company’s ethos and emphasis on product end-of-life, reusability, and biodegradability.

Made+Mycelium resulted from an interdisciplinary design-build studio run at Swinburne University. It drew together students from architecture, interior, industrial design, product design engineering and architectural engineering. The brief involved providing an interior design for the store, and making a series of mycelium objects that are both decorative and functional.

Apart from working with an experimental material, another unique challenge that the design team faced was Melbourne entering its 6th lockdown due to COVID-19, and travel was restricted to a 5km radius from each person’s home restriction, just after the project commenced. Thus, the team lost access to the university’s fabrication and workshop facilities.

The team was tasked to rethink the relationship between design and making ,and turn the constraints into opportunities. In response, the team used only household, second-hand, and discarded items for moulding and growing the mycelium objects. After growing the objects, these items were either returned to their original use, sold back to the marketplace, or formed part of the final object.

As a result, the objects with unique stories behind them, such as Christmas trees made with toilet rolls, stools assembled from salvaged chair parts, plant pots made with egg cartons, and plinths moulded from bookshelves.

Project team: Canhui Chen, John Sadar, Adele Easton, Bailey Harper, Dilan Yariz, Fifi Prayogo, Harry Tweedale, Hayley Boicovitis, Jack Arceri, Louis Ryan, Luka Markulin, Marianne Coetzee, Megan lambert, Tyson Morgan

Interior + Greenhouse Floor Plan

Interior + Greenhouse