Company New Heroes Builds With Mycelium for a Dutch Design Week Installation
How bio can you go? Pascal Leboucq took that dare with the Growing Pavilion, an experiment in bio-based architecture that materialized in Eindhoven for 10 days last fall during Dutch Design Week. The design head of multidisciplinary collective Company New Heroes enlisted Krown.bio, a producer of products made from mycelium, to cover the 750-square-foot circular structure’s aspen-and-pine framework with fungal filaments. “Instead of identical exterior walls, the facade forms an organic skin,” Leboucq states. So organic, in fact, that it supported the daily harvesting of edible oyster mushrooms to tempt the 75,000 fairgoers each afternoon. Furthermore, the flooring and furnishings under the domed cotton roof were fabricated from natural sources, too. A lamp by Krown.bio partner Eric Klarenbeek, for instance, accentuated the natural luminosity of seaweed alongside his mycelium-shrouded ottoman. Benches encircling the exterior were built with rice-straw boards. Aiming to ignite the evolution to a bio-based economy, the project team has made its findings freely available so, says Leboucq, “Designers and companies can take steps together.”
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