Lisette Woltjer

Don't you just love the way sunlight shines through stained glass windows? It has something magical. Moving even. Now imagine such windows coming alive. You might think of the stories told on old church windows. But when I say moving, I mean it literally. With a group of students from the Academy of Architecture we created moving stained glas windows in the big greenhouse at Mediamatic. We were guided by David Habets, who studies the growing patterns of lichen and other funghi on windows using agar agar sheets. A kind of plant-based gelatine that sticks to the glass of the greenhouse.

First we learned how to make agar agar sheets using molds and how to apply funghi spores on them. Then we got creative: putting all kinds of patterns on the windows, trying to tell a story and to steer the growth of the funghi in a certain direction. After a few weeks of experimenting, we discovered that the funghi will grow just the way they want to grow. But the growing funghi were not the only ones moving, our agar agar sheets moved as well. They were being moved by the greenhouse itself. Depending on the temperature and humidity in the greenhouse, our agar agar sheet started curling up around the edges, shrinking or even completely losing touch with the window and falling on the ground.

So we decided to make a moving display of moving mycelia. A collective collage of agar agar sheets placed in a vertical brick like pattern. At the start it looks like a stained glass window. Over time the funghi start growing and creating mycelium structures on the agar agar sheets, which will shrink, curl and move around until eventually all of it will dissapear from the windows again. In between, the organically disappearing sheets create holes in the structure to look through the window. And as a person, you can move around the entire display and see the funghi grow from every angle. When you do, you will discover that every sheet contains an individual mycelium network and yet, they are all still part of the same whole. Just like how we as individual designers worked together as a group on this project. It was really nice to have a change of scene, to work among the plants (and the fish) in the greenhouse instead of at our own academy. We were so much more connected to the climate conditions of the greenhouse and the weather outside. Big thanks to Mediamatic for giving us a place to work in the sun.