CleanLab / Early Experiments
Early investigations into living materials, plants and the reuse of furniture.
- Year
- 2020
- Location
- Mediamatic · Amsterdam
- Materials
- Mycelium, hemp-based substrate, jute, plaster and found furniture
- Credits
- Andy Cartier, with Nehis Osagie and Dominik Einfalt · Mediamatic CleanLab
About
the project
During a living-material design internship in the CleanLab at Mediamatic, Amsterdam, Andy Cartier began working with mycelium: learning how the material behaves, then testing where it could be useful.
Chimera Furniture gave a broken metal chair found outside the lab a new grown seat: a jute “pillow” filled with hemp-based substrate, shaped by sitting on it and left to grow for around ten days. Hybrid Material combined mycelium with plaster, first growing mycelium onto a broken plaster brick, then casting plaster around a grown puzzle-shaped brick to make bi-material “Hybricks”. With the CleanLab team, the work extended to biodegradable plant pots and the mycelium pigeon towers.
Andy documented the experiments in articles published on mediamatic.net, linked below.