School projects

Fungi

Timothée BOYAT Design, School projects, Woodworking
Fungi

Fungi is a wooden cabinet that allows one to grow his own edible mushrooms at home.

This piece of furniture was made in 2017 and it is a one year project for my degree in design and cabinet-making.

There are many parasites in our daily environment. Air pollution, noise, hustling and bustling, advertising can be perceived as intrusive and disturbing. My project, called Fungi, inclines to get closer to a healthier and more natural way of life. It is a wooden cabinet which is invaded by a parasite. There are many parasites in nature, but I was particularly interested by mushrooms, which have a dual aspect. They can be both destructive and extremely positive. Mushrooms can also interact with many other beings by creating a symbiosis, which benefits everyone. I chose to create a symbiosis between my piece of furniture and its parasite. So from this noxious invasion emerges a positive result : the growth of edible mushrooms.

This piece of furniture is made of 3 drawers which are designed for mushroom growing on coffee waste. It also includes storage for a spray, little bags, a mushroom knife and a 80 pages book which explains the project. It is 120 cm high, 90 cm wide and 45 cm deep.

The wooden part of the cabinet is made of heated ash wood, which is rot-resistant and stable when exposed to moisture. All the warped corners are steam bent, using different moulds. I used Stainless steel for the drawers bottoms, which involved bending, cutting and welding. The white parasite was 3D modeled and printed in a bio-plastic made of starch, then filled with a mix of straw and mushroom mycelium, thus creating a durable and strong composite material. I developed a partnership with the FabLab of Grenoble (France) for this part of the project.

Workshops

Timothée BOYAT School projects
Workshops

During my woodworking studies, I did a few very intersting and instructive workshops.

In 2014, the New-Zealand woodturner Graeme Priddle came to conduct a really informative workshop, to teach his various techniques of woodturning and finishing.

In 2015, two woodturners came to Moirans-en-Montagne, Eli Avisera (Israel) and Jean-François Escoulen (France). They taught us their respective techniques, such as eccentric woodturning, inlay and special finishing.

In 2015, I also worked with Raphaël Galley, a french plastic artist, on a library project. He had designed a library on the theme “In the shelter, I read!” for a book conservation project launched by the Bourgogne region. During two years, this structure was placed in many libraries throughout the region.

The library is a large square structure made of moving plywood layers (images below). My class was in charge of the manufacturing, so we had to find technical solutions to allow the layers to move independently of each other and make the whole structure as light as possible. This was a four-months project, very instructive on how to solve technical issues and how to manage group work. Among other group works, I was personnaly responsible for the making of 200 specific pins, to lock the layers. I made them from the drawings to the making on a digital wood lathe.