The elective course ‘Regenerative Building(s) with Living Engineered Materials‘ led by Jan Wurm and Laura Orfali Soria and supported by Andreas Biront and Mona Lavasani encourages master students to explore the intersection of architecture, ecology, and experimentation with living materials.
The results in which students explored the intersection of architecture, ecology, and material experimentation through the design of a chair, will be exhibited at the fair of the New European Bauhaus Festival this year. (Brussels, 9-13 June, 2026)
Working in pairs, the students investigated how living materials – specifically mycelium grown on urban cardboard waste – could be cultivated, shaped, and engineered into functional and expressive seating prototypes.
Each team developed a 1:2 scale chair that reflects the course’s central themes: circularity, the transformation of waste into a resource, and the integration of processes of growth, decay, and regeneration into design thinking. The prototypes demonstrate the structural, aesthetic, and ecological potential of mycelium based composites, while also engaging with broader questions of community, landscape, and the temporality of materials.