Growing Matter(s): A Living Pavilion Built from Mycelium
At Milan Design Week 2025, Danish architecture studio Henning Larsen, in partnership with the Politecnico di Milano, presents Growing Matter(s)—an innovative pavilion that explores the architectural potential of bio-based materials. Located at Via Bonardi 9, the installation invites visitors to engage with mycelium, not merely as a material, but as a living organism that challenges conventional design norms.
Architecture Grown, Not Built
The pavilion is composed of 80 mycelium spheres, each grown from organic substrates such as hemp, flour, sugar, and beer dregs. These were inoculated with two mycelium strains—Pleurotus Eryngii and Pleurotus Ostreatus—and cultivated in wooden moulds over several weeks. The result is a collection of spherical modules, each bearing the unique signature of its growth environment. Rather than enforcing industrial uniformity, the installation celebrates natural variation, texture, and imperfection.
This hands-off approach to form challenges the architectural obsession with control and precision. Instead, it embraces biological intelligence and unpredictability as a design tool—one that can shape new aesthetic and spatial languages for architecture.
Material Circularity in Practice
Half of the spheres were dried to provide structural stability, while the remaining half were left biologically active, allowing them to evolve over time. This duality serves as a living metaphor for material transformation, impermanence, and regenerative design. The mycelium is fully biodegradable, and at the end of the exhibition, it will decompose naturally.
Supporting the spheres is a borrowed scaffolding system, engineered for disassembly and reuse. Nothing is permanent, and nothing is wasted—a practical demonstration of circular design principles in the built environment.
A Collaborative Material Ecosystem
The project is the result of close collaboration between Henning Larsen and the Politecnico di Milano’s Material Balance Research Lab, supported by the Ramboll Foundation, with mycelium production by Spore.nl and scaffolding engineering from Di Falco srl. Project management and additional sponsorship were provided by RIMOND.
As an extension of Henning Larsen’s upcoming presentation at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025, Growing Matter(s) offers a preview of their broader commitment to biogenic materials and climate-positive design.
Design Reimagined for a Living World
For architects, interior designers, and landscape professionals, the installation raises critical questions: How do we design with materials that are alive? How do we embrace aesthetics rooted in decay, variation, and transformation?
By blurring the boundaries between nature and structure, Growing Matter(s) pushes the profession to rethink its relationship with materials—not as static elements to be controlled, but as ecological agents with their own life cycles. It opens new avenues for sustainable, local, and regenerative architecture, where buildings don’t just stand, but grow, evolve, and return to the earth.
Source: Henning Larsen
Photos: DSL Studio / Zoey Kroening