Pageant set designer Simon Carroll has created the spiralling Hayes Pavilion from salvaged timber and mycelium at Glastonbury pageant to problem the trade’s over-reliance on polystyrene foam.

Encircled by a protracted bench, the Hayes Pavilion was designed as each a gathering house and a dialog piece, exploring whether or not mycelium can be utilized as a extra sustainable materials for constructing the flowery units discovered at festivals like Glastonbury.

The construction consists of a 26-metre-long timber body, formed roughly just like the quantity six with one lengthy wall clad in mycelium – a biomaterial grown from the basis construction of fungi that’s more and more being explored as a pure insulator and hearth retardant.

To kind the wall, mycelium insulation boards created by UK firm Biohm have been reduce up and mixed in a lot the identical manner that set designers within the movie and music trade will carve elaborate units out of low cost polystyrene panels.

Carroll, who has labored within the trade for twenty years and was liable for Glastonbury’s personal Lonely Hearts Membership stage, got down to discover whether or not mycelium may provide a viable substitute for the fossil plastic, which can’t be processed in conventional recycling streams.

“I’ve seen the impression of what we do,” he instructed Dezeen. “The pageant trade and the theatre aspect is much more resourceful – primarily due to funds – and so they do are likely to try to be sure that supplies are upcycled.”

“However ultimately, they find yourself in landfill or incinerated. And the movie trade, sadly, is notoriously unhealthy for it.”

For the Hayes Pavilion, Carroll labored with a bunch of fabric researchers and set designers from throughout music, movie and TV to push mycelium to its artistic limits.

“We tried all types of various approaches primarily based round the best way that we presently method using polystyrene,” he stated.

That meant slicing, sanding and glueing the panels collectively utilizing a gelatin-based adhesive to create an undulating three-dimensional floor and colouring it utilizing a seaweed-based bioplastic coating by industrial designer Aleksa Kostur.

With the goal of preserving the pavilion’s footprint as little as doable, Carroll used numerous reclaimed supplies in its development.

The uncovered timber framing system was made utilizing salvaged wooden from a 200-year-old Douglas fir that was upended in Wales throughout Storm Arwen, whereas the roof is made utilizing repurposed tents from an organization that rents pageant marquees.

To make sure stability, industrial timber was used to kind the decking helps holding up the pavilion’s raised, oriented strand board (OSB) flooring, which protrude out past the footprint of the construction to behave as a bench the place festivalgoers can perch.

“Mycelium gives a communal community to a forest and I needed to try to carry that concept into the design when it comes to giving individuals a spot to sit down and discuss and have interaction with the challenge,” Carroll defined.

Linked through metal bolts and mounting plates, the picket construction could be fully demounted and flat-packed so it may be reused for future editions of the pageant.

Carroll plans to return the Hayes Pavilion to Glastonbury yearly as a automobile for exploring new inexperienced applied sciences and approaches which can be promising to revolutionise the trade.

The mycelium panels could be retired after the inaugural version to create space for different improvements. However Carroll claims that, not like polystyrene, the panels could be composted as soon as they’re now not wanted, even with their bioplastic coating.

To confirm these claims and assess the general impression of the challenge, the designer enlisted sustainability marketing consultant Pauline Bourdon to finish a complete carbon evaluation of the construction.

“Plenty of the time after we do large builds and issues like this, time is an terrible strain and that then signifies that we’ve to make sacrificial decisions,” Carroll defined.

“We try increasingly to know what the impacts of these are, whether or not that be materials decisions or staffing decisions.”

Though Biohm’s mycelium insulation boards are near receiving regulatory approval, Carroll says that extra materials growth will probably be essential to adapt them to be used in set design.

That is largely right down to the fabric inconsistencies which can be revealed when the ready-made panels are reduce and sanded to create extra intricate shapes.

“I had initially provide you with the idea of fairly a distinct design when it comes to its styling and I realised in a short time that we’re not fairly the place we should be,” he stated.

“We’re at very early phases and it is given us the power to now suggestions and to proceed creating a product that’s extra appropriate.”

Glastonbury can also be working to cut back its environmental footprint in different methods.

This yr, the pageant will probably be fully powered by renewable power and renewable fuels, whereas the sale of disposable vapes will probably be banned in an extension of final yr’s ban on single-use plastic bottles.

Reversible pavilions which can be designed for disassembly have change into more and more widespread amongst architects and designers lately because the trade grapples with the environmental implications of making short-term installations.

Amongst them is Vestre’s stand from the 2020 Stockholm Furnishings & Gentle Honest, which was repurposed to kind an set up at Milan design week the next yr.