Growing Futures

Growing Futures, winner of a S+T+ARTS residency within the MUSAE project, explores a new design paradigm where mycelium, robotics, and humans co-create biodegradable and adaptive habitats directly on-site.
In response to the unsustainable exploitation of resources, the project embraces a regenerative model powered by nature-based solutions and technological innovation. Local food waste is used as a substrate to cultivate native fungal species, turning what is waste for some into building material for others. This process replaces traditional extraction with biofabrication, enabling materials to grow rather than be manufactured.
Within this living system, robots monitor environmental conditions, distribute nutrients, and adapt the process in real time. Growing Futures proposes a shift from designing with nature to co-designing with nature - where materials are not static resources but living agents in constant transformation, and the designer becomes a facilitator of living processes, respecting and integrating the intelligence of natural systems.