Talk and discussion:
Friday, 17 November 2017, 19:00
Maurizio Montalti © Bas Losekoot, ARTIS MICROPIA
Maurizio’s practice, known as Officina Corpuscoli, founded in 2010 and based in Amsterdam, seeks to reveal unorthodox relationships among existing paradigms. By distilling research and analysis and tangibly materialising relevant facts, Officina Corpuscoli’s s goal is to create projects and conditions that allow for a resonant critical experience, by the synthesis of ideas through design. One of the main challenges of the current century is to transform our consumption oriented economic system into an ecologically-responsible, conscious and self-sustaining society. It is therefore paramount to envision and to develop alternatives tackling the urgent issues characterising collective communities worldwide. One of these is identified in waste generation and the subsequent environmental impact originated by oil-based/synthetic/toxic compounds (plastics), as well as by consumer’s behaviour.
By entering a direct partnership with micro-organisms (e.g. fungi), a range of novel opportunities is revealed, allowing to envision and put to test a radical paradigm shift, offering a different insight into the objects populating our everyday life and the materials they consist of, as well as into the way production systems could be conceived and reinterpreted.
The ambition of the ongoing design-research project ‘Growing Lab’ for example is in fact to tangibly demonstrate how traditional synthetic (oil-based), toxic materials, such as plastics, could be replaced with novel mycelium-based materials, grown on natural, organic substrates.
Moreover, mycelium-based materials are fully compostable and can be freely disposed of, as in a garden, re-entering the natural cycles and becoming nutrients for new life.
Press Release: PM-material changes_III
The Growing Lab – Mycelia © Officina Corpuscoli | Maurizio Montalti – pure mycelium sample rigid plastic
The Growing Lab – Mycelia © Officina Corpuscoli | Maurizio Montalti – bowl with fruiting bodies alive
The Growing Lab – Mycelia © Officina Corpuscoli | Maurizio Montalti – Mykes