The Art of Shaping
Mushrooms

In 2022, I began experimenting with shaping mycelium and exploring how its growth could be encouraged into different shapes and forms. Over time, I began experimenting with guiding mushrooms around objects, including seashells, to better understand how their growth could be influenced and shaped by their surroundings.

The images below document one of these experiments. It took approximately 10 days for the oyster mushroom to form, followed by another 7 days of carefully encouraging and shaping its growth around the seashell.

What became particularly exciting was how each experiment began to inform the next. The characteristics, challenges, and unexpected outcomes of each growth cycle contributed to a larger question: could these living materials eventually be cultivated into a structure?

Two years of experimentation ultimately led to my first successfully grown structure made from a mycelium-based substrate. The process was not simply about growing mushrooms, but about learning how to collaborate with their natural growth patterns and discover what forms might emerge through that relationship.

Explore the resulting Gatekeepers project here.