Mycelia House
Caity Duffus, the Carl Nielsen Design Accelerator recipient for 2024, is bringing mushroom growing home with her design prototype for Mycelia House as part of her vision for a sustainable fungi network.
During her nine-month Carl Nielsen Design Accelerator program in 2024, Caity Duffus set up a studio with a ceramic 3D printer to prototype the design for Mycelia House, a terracotta vessel with holes that allow the natural growth of mushrooms. Under the guidance of industrial designer Ed Ko, she made and tested 17 prototype vessels, various plates and lids, and collaborated with mushroom growers at Ruffle Farm and Nick Ritar from Milkwood on the substrate grow bag system.
Duffus’ long-term goal is to promote the important role of fungi in our ecosystem and to challenge perceptions of them as poisonous, reframing them as beautiful and sustainable. In the following interview, Duffus spoke with Powerhouse Collection curator Angelique Hutchison about her experience on the program as she readied Mycelia House for market.
‘Fungi is the largest living organism on our planet. As humans, there’s a lot we can learn from their way of being,’
Prototyping Mycelia House
Angelique Hutchison: What was your intention with the accelerator program?
The main goal of the program was to develop the design of Mycelia House into a commercial scalable solution. I wanted to work closely with mushroom growers to validate and refine the system. Ceramic 3D printing is still fairly new, so this meant purchasing a machine for the prototyping and production process.
