Objectspace Plinth Proposal: Bloom^W031

For the Objectspace call for Plinth Proposals in 2023, Groupwork proposed using formed mycelium blocks to create a sculptural installation that can be occupied, allowing people to experience the potential spatial conditions of this novel material. The simple expressed shape of the foundational building block of the sculpture—a standard brick—is a representation of typical construction methods, defined by industrial processes of modern development that ignored the Earth’s biomes, allowing the spaces humans inhabit to be more and more unnatural. The form of the sculpture, assembled from the individual blocks, is an abstract organic shape that plays on the expectations of what an “organic building material” may suggest spatially, and that offers a magnified representation of microscopic organic processes detached from scale in relation to typical understandings of the built environment.

The mycelium blocks would be created using technology and equipment developed for mycelium packaging at scale, then transported to site and assembled according to predefined construction documentation. The intended lifespan is the duration of the installation at Objectspace, at which point the entire sculpture could be composted.

The installation proposition is a spatial sculpture that can be inhabited by visitors to the gallery. The material properties of the mycelium blocks would be demonstrated to be tactile, abstract. The sculpture would expose people to the possibilities of radical new natural building materials.