Search anything

Close search
Back to Programme Archive

(Archive) The Mycelium House

A fungal approach to life

This project was part of DDW 2022
The Mycelium House — © Betiana Pavón & Elsa Gil

A circular plant-based gastronomic service where food and design intersect.
It will show how a plant-based diet can be both nutritious and delicious giving whole and symbiotic meals. While fermenting and cooking, food waste is created so they'd be transformed into biomaterials to develop menage.

A circular plant-based gastronomic service where food and design intersect.

The Mycelium House shows how a plant-based diet can be both nutritious and delicious giving whole and symbiotic meals, focusing on the fermentation through fungus, achieving tempeh, kombucha and cashew cheeses. While fermenting and cooking, food waste and failures from experimentation are created so they'd be transformed into biomaterials to develop the menage. Creating a zero waste methodology that little shops and restaurants can apply to their own service. It is adaptable to others, creating a symbiotic coexistence.

Nature as the creator and technology as a tool

Getting to know your ecosystem allows to make the most of it, implement technologies and resources that are friendly with its behavior and vice versa. Moreover, controlling the materia and developing a small system that works for you, means that you’ll also be able to control the outputs. That’s why in “The Mycelium House” the food wastes generated (outputs) were turned into the menage where the food was going to be served.
Different types of Fungi work as the creator of the fermentation processes, filling up the food with good bacterias for the human organism. While custom technology accompanies the whole process: from an OpenSource incubator for the tempeh, 3D modeling and printing for cashews cheeses molds; 3D clay printer for coffee grounds bio-composite bowls; and milled molds for the development of the organic shaped SCOBY and tempeh biomaterial plates.

Play video
Play video
Play video

The Mycelium House, a living picnic — © Elsa Gil

Menage made from living organisms and food waste — © Elsa Gil

Cashew cheese fermentation process — © Betiana Pavón & Elsa Gil

Ferments workshop: tempeh, kombucha and cheeses.