Caracara Collective
Caracara Collective -run by Aleksi Vesaluoma, designer and material maker, and Aleksi Puustinen, designer and fine woodworker- is an experimental design studio that creates art and design installations and collections using biowaste.
Project Description
Mycelium sausages is a technique in which mycelium is mixed with a substrate, pushed into a cotton bandage and freely woven into a shape. Over 2-3 weeks the material will grow and dry into a robust structure. The process can be thought of as something between traditional rattan weaving and manual 3D printing, as it allows one to form a diverse range of shapes using a long tube of mycelium. The technique was developed to explore new ways of fabricating mycelium objects without the need for moulds, and to explore ways of growing site-specific structures that don’t depend on modularity.
This ongoing exploration started in 2016 as a project at Brunel University and was first exhibited at the London Festival of Architecture in June 2017.