Growing Chair - Straight from the fields to your home

Eco Factor: Willow trees are planted together with a Russian vine in a chair shaped miniature greenhouse.

Michel Bussien’s Growing Chair was on exhibit at Konstfack’s spring exhibition this month. As the name suggests, it does grow up for you with the passage of time. Chair is a sort of green house that contains Willow trees planted together with a Russian vine. Nothing much to surprise as it’s a sort of experiment in which an attempt is being made to make trees and plants grow up into chairs like a crop in the fields.


Idea suggests that when required, these can be harvested and brought straight from the field into the living room. What makes it possible to shape a growing structure into chair is a potter called Bactopia. It uses a mixture of Agar and bacteria. All the layers of Agar, stacked on each other, form a three dimensional structure when bacteria are spread all over it. Simply, instead if printing with plastic or other materials, structure is printed with living bacteria that is provided with favorable conditions for further growth. Bacteria that can be fed upon mixture of nutrients and draw materials, like Calcium, are considered best for such a work. After the bacteria dies it leaves a solid structure behind. What I could get out of this experiment is that designer wants to remind us of our relation with the nature.