The urgent need to improve our consumer behaviour and lifestyle is distinct with global issues like depletion of natural resources, global warming, and dense living conditions.There is a pressing need to shift our present understanding and expectations of urban lifestyle and look at how we can sustain ourselves and our planet in our current reality. We, as humans, have separated ourselves from our natural environments. But this is a false assumption. When we come in our built environments, we are not leaving the natural one behind - that is the illusion of control, the illusion of us & them. We’ve created for ourselves these built structures that have created a disconnect from the changes to the natural environment. A fern growing out of the bricks on the side of a building in downtown Vancouver at W. Pender and Seymour (image 1.) emphasises the separation of our built and natural environments and the mixture that does exist between these spaces whether we are aware of it or not. The separation of the built and the natural, human and environment, indoor and outdoor, the smooth and the striated. So what can we learn, as designers, from observing, engaging and actively existing with the natural world?

As a piece for the Design + Nature book, I’m proposing a written narrative reflection alongside visuals. The writing will recount my experience over a four month period during graduate school where I embarked on growing mushrooms for the first time and the influence the experience had on me as a designer. The narrative will reflect on how the experience became so much more than just growing mushroom as a material, but turned into a relationship and rapport between the mushrooms, myself and everyone else. 

Starting the narrative from the very beginning with sourcing and purchasing the mushroom, I will discuss the reactions of friends and family that turned into a narrative on it’s own (image 2.), of preconceived notions and expectations of mushrooms from a cultural/society influence. 

This will lead into the influence cultivating took over my personal space - in both living and studio. Living in close contact with this “other” organism challenged my expectations and sense of control in my built environment, having to find a space (image 3.) and adapting a space (image 4.) in my own environment to meet their needs, that ultimately changed my own habits to accommodate them. The piece will end with how the engagement and interaction with the mushrooms through care provided a source of knowledge that was active and engaging - knowledge that needed to be gained in a time sensitive manner, that was gained through a relationship between the mushrooms and myself. 

In the end it became less about the end product but was more about the actions that existed around the creating of the product. This was a concept that was difficult to experience as a product designer, but was the most important to grasp and understand in shifting towards more sustainable design. The end goal of this piece is to encourage designers to observe, but also to engage and exist in close contact with the natural world to challenge their existing notions. It will have a profound influence, as it had on my notions of care, control and expectations.