Inaugral design:

Mycelia House, teracotta cultivation system

Mycelia House is a home cultivation system for growing oyster mushrooms. It’s inspired by DIY bucket grows and cardboard spray-and-grow kits.

It’s reimagined as a considered, sculptural object in the home - lending dignity to the mushrooms. Mycelia House is designed for oyster mushroom varieties that side fruit, with top-fruiting varieties coming soon.

Mushroom grow kits offer an accessible and engaging way for beginners to cultivate their own mushrooms at home, while also gaining insights into a more circular food system. 

The terracotta design leverages its natural wicking properties to create an ideal microclimate for mushrooms to thrive. Simply add water to the tray and lightly mist around the vessel twice daily. Mushrooms typically begin fruiting within 5–7 days.

Each Mycelia House includes a grow guide booklet to support you on your cultivation journey. Please note: mushroom growth substrate is sold separately.

The design philosophy

Mycelia House emerged as a response to what feels most needed now: a call to re-centre our relationships - to listen more deeply, care more fully, and rebuild inner and outer threads of connection.
At its core, Mycelia House is about imbuing ritual into everyday life through care and attention.

By tending to the mushrooms each day, the design encourages presence, patience, and responsibility. The intention is not only to grow food at home, but to imagine a future where food is grown locally, shared within communities, and embedded into daily rhythms.

Mycelia House envisions a shift toward sustainable and regenerative food systems that prioritise quality, efficiency, and wellbeing - that are built in reciprocity. 

Design context

The blends industrial design, craft, science, biology and technology, showing how contemporary objects now exist in hybrid states. It a shift towards regenerative, symbiotic frameworks in 21st century design.

What began as an exploration of mycelium as a sustainable material in design shifted into the development of a home cultivation system. Each stage of the design process allowed the design to unfold in the way it has.

The vessel embodies a new design language, with ceramic 3D printing merging algorithmic precision with handmade variation. All museums have ceramics that tell us how societies lived, and Mycelia House shares the story of now.

Follow the hyphae [here] to learn more.

Sustainability and Making

Sustainability at Mycelia House is understood as a living practice - shaped by observation, care, and ongoing learning. At every stage of the process, from relationships and research to materials, manufacturing, use, and end of life, decisions are guided by responsiveness rather than certainty. This way of working is inspired by mycelial networks themselves: adaptive, relational, and oriented toward balance.

Imagine a world that values the beauty and reciprocity of the fungi kingdom - where systems are designed not for extraction, but for mutual support. Fungal networks show us how life thrives through cooperation, distribution, and shared resources. As Paul Stamets writes, “Through the genius of evolution, the Earth has selected fungal networks as a governing force managing ecosystems.” This intelligence offers a powerful model for how we might rethink the systems we live within.

We are living at a moment where the impacts of past decisions are visible - environmentally, socially, and economically. Globalised systems of production and consumption have prioritised speed, convenience, and scale, often at the expense of soil health, biodiversity, community resilience, and food security. Mycelia House responds to this context quietly, through practice rather than prescription, by supporting local, circular ways of growing and consuming food.

Growing food at home shifts our relationship to consumption. We tend to waste less, grow only what we need, and develop a deeper respect for the effort and resources involved. When food is grown locally, within homes and communities - it becomes less of a commodity and more of a shared responsibility.

Sustainability, in this sense, is not only about materials. It is also about how we listen, respond, and relate to the world around us. First Nations cultures have long embodied this understanding, living in deep relationship with land, water, and all beings - guided by principles of reciprocity, restraint, and care for future generations.

Mycelia House is made in small batches in Sydney, Australia, combining emerging ceramic 3D-printing technology with traditional handcrafted techniques such as slip casting. The ceramics are designed to be durable and long-lasting, supporting repair, reuse, and continued care rather than disposability.

Used mushroom substrate can be returned to the earth to enrich soil. Plastic grow bags should be disposed of in the bin, while bio-based alternatives are actively being explored and will be adopted when viable. Growers may also choose to create their own substrate and place it directly into the vessel.

Sustainability is not viewed here as a final outcome, but as an aspiration - something shaped through humility, reflection, and adaptation over time. Like mycelium, progress emerges through small connections, careful listening, and a willingness to learn from what works - and what does not.

Values and Processes

Inspired by mycellium.