Dr. Andrea Rossi and I will be hosting a mini-symposium at the ICSA 2025 Conference, titled "Mycelium-based Composites: from Forest to Design Research" (Antwerp, Belgium. July 8th – 11th, 2025).
As mycelium-based composites are an emerging class of materials presenting potential alternatives in architecture and construction to less sustainable solutions, while also bringing unique functional and aesthetic prospects, we believe they represents a unique opportunity for designers to investigate both technological developments, and to engage new discourses about design semiotics, pedagogical methods and user experiences that can challenge existing material cultures. We seek contributions that advance technological considerations in manufacturing development, material design and cultures, and more recent explorations in Engineered Living Materials. We welcome with a particular interest the contributions that are driven by improving the sustainability of these materials, and that advance circular economies.
There will be four separate paper sessions with specific focuses:
- Material design of mycelium-based composites, centred on the development of novel processes and techniques to tune and improve their unique properties towards architectural applications,
- Upscaling the sustainable manufacturing of mycelium materials, expecting submissions which propose methods to increase the range of applicability of mycelium at the architectural scale,
- Fungal mycelium material cultures & aesthetics, focused on the unique implication of fungal materials for a renewed materiality in architectural design and thinking,
- Mycelium-based Engineered Living Materials, uncovering novel cultivation and analytical methods, design theory and practice, and social studies in this new field of research which may involve bacterial and fungal co-cultivation, GMO, or investigations towards working with these.
The call for participation is now closed.
You can find more details on the ICSA conference website: https://www.icsa2025.com/participation/
You can find more details on the ICSA conference website: https://www.icsa2025.com/participation/
This is a rare opportunity to focus deeply on mycelium-based composite advances and to gather the research community! We hope you will find this call of interest and are willing to make a contribution.
We are very much looking forward to reading your research and discuss it together in Antwerp!