Its creators, the faculties Elena Rocabert and Raquel Buj, fuse craftsmanship, nature and technology to reinvent the way we experience design
What about design as a living thing? Experimentation and avant-garde materialise in the installation of IED Madrid in Fiesta Design
Date
13 February 2025
From 6 February to 15 March, Madrid Design Festival turns the capital into the epicentre of talent and innovation.
In this edition, the design experience that IED Madrid brings to Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE) promises to go beyond the conventional exhibition, making evident its role in the design avant-garde by inviting to a visit that brings together thought, experimentation, creativity and collaboration between disciplines.
From the Bio Lab of the school, the teachers Elena Rocabert and Raquel Buj take their biomaterial experimentation to the artistic field. This idea, born in their classrooms and workshops, proposes that we shed our human skin and cover ourselves with a mycelium dermis.
Breathing design: a sensory journey through the undercurrents of nature
Imagine entering a world where design is not static, but organic. ‘A hole in my garden’ is a tribute to nature and innovation.
The rooms of Institución Libre de Enseñanza -with their white walls and rounded shapes- evoke the aesthetics of a laboratory. The metal branches of the façade through which the light filters in, visually connect with the garden outside. It inspires us to think about all the processes and exchanges that take place underground, in a natural laboratory beyond human control. Can we slip through a hole that leads us underneath the garden?
The proposal is inspired by the growth patterns of mycelium, similar to those of branches and roots, growing and extending above the substrate in which it is found, generating a soft, light and fragile tissue. The mycelium weaves a non-visible web in the natural environment, creating symbiotic relationships between fungi, trees, plants, insects and bacteria.
This installation proposes a material, light and sound experience made of invisible processes, growths and transformations. A delicate but immense network that connects life in natural ecosystems.
An installation that is also a loudspeaker for the sounds emitted by the mycelium network and of the user's interaction with the space, mixed with the inaudible vibrations of an Amsterdam forest
Entering this space invites to wander among this fragility: an environment of fabrics in process, a place to reflect on the vulnerability of the ecosystems we inhabit and of which we are a part.
The mycelium acts not only as a constructive element, but is explored as a connector of territories through sound, thanks to a sonorous piece created using geophones to record the inaudible vibrations of the substratum in Amsterdamse Bos, an artificial forest located on the outskirts of Amsterdam. Luis Lecea is the artist in charge of this sound piece and installation.
The sound design integrates into the mycelium structure, activating its capacity as a vibrant actor-network that weaves connections between landscape-body systems. By this way, the piece also becomes a listening object, a loudspeaker.
This installation has been developed by the designers Raquel Buj, Programme Leader of the Master's Degree in Textile Design and New Materials, and Elena Rocabert, teacher of Experimentation in the same programme, with the collaboration of their students. Together they have created an interactive and sensorial space where the public not only observes but also interacts with a design in constant metamorphosis.
As visitors pass through the installation, they will feel how these elements react to their presence, expanding or contracting as if they were breathing, translating it into vibrations and sounds.
The appointment with this innovative proposal will be in room 1.2 of Institución Libre de Enseñanza (P.º del Gral. Martínez Campos), from 12 to 23 February, from 10 am to 9 pm. An event that promises to challenge the perception of design and to immerse attendees in an ecosystem as fragile as fascinating.
Project Management: Istituto Europeo di Design, IED Madrid
Installation Design: Elena Rocabert and Raquel Buj
Production: Elena Rocabert and Raquel Buj; students from Experimentation with Materials area from Istituto Europeo di Design, IED Madrid: Macarena de Jesús Alfaro Vergara, Camila Escurra, Emma Guillem Colls, Ana Herrán Bocanegra, Paola Andrea López Pastrana, Sara Mateos Vara, Rafael Perelmuter, Ana Schiavi y Ana Cristina Turriza Galván
Sound Installation Design: Luis Lecea
Biomaterials Consultancy: María Mallo
Materials: mycelium, natural substrate, cotton fabric, metal fram
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