Plant-based design takes root at Melbourne museum
In Australia, an exhibition at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria is exploring how renewable materials such as fungi, algae and oyster shells can shape the future of design. Titled Plant Life: The Nature of Design, the exhibition features 60 works that use plant-based materials to reimagine everyday objects.
“For most of human culture, up until the discovery and refinement of petrochemical-based products, everything was effectively either plant-, animal-, or mineral-based,” Ewan McEoin, NGV’s senior curator of contemporary design and architecture, told design publication dezeen. “So this idea of cyclical life was fundamental for thousands of years, across all cultures. What we’re trying to do is look at a future where plants return as the dominant source.”
Highlights include Urgent Is The Rhythm, Kate Scardifield’s masonry blocks made from algae and oyster-shell waste; Ecotono Shiringa, a biobased leather jacket created by the Awajún people of the Peruvian Amazon and Mozhdeh Matin using cotton treated with milky sap from shiringa trees; and Fernando Laposse’s Resting Place daybed, featuring fabrics dyed with avocado-seed pigment and marigold flowers.
The exhibition runs through February 2027.
Category: Chemicals & Materials
