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Aléa

@alea_work

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Experimental materiality
@stellaleeps @mimivert

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Come gather with @alea_work in Fontainebleau Forest! We will encounter the fall ecosystem of the forest, including mushrooms, lichens, and changing trees. Come prepared for some walking on dirt paths and a notebook to record your findings, and perhaps some foraging! Free!

Aléa Work is an experimental design and material research studio based in Paris. Their practice explores growth, decay, and waste, and reciprocal methods of fabrication with the other-than-human.

Sign up with link in bio for full info! October 10th

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WORKSHOP SEASON 2026 | Color Experiments with Fungi

This immersive workshop, led by design studio Aléa Work, explored color as a living, evolving process through fungi. Participants engaged in hands-on experimentation, dyeing with foraged mushrooms and natural pigments, while also experimenting with mycelium to degrade and transform color in existing textiles. Participants moved between individual investigations and collective experiments, testing pigments, growing mycelium on textiles, and documenting color transformations. Challenging the common perception of mycelium as monochrome, the workshop revealed an underexplored fungal spectrum in which color emerged through interaction, time, and material agency.

Season curated by : Guillermo Gil Fernández @guillegilfernandez & Pablo Sevilla @sevillaisnotacity  Tutors : Aléa @alea_work Miriam Josi @mimivert & Stella Lee Prowse @stellaleeps
Assisted by Paula Schulte @paula_schulte_  
Boisbuchet Media Team:

Photos : Yachu Hsu (Joy) @xxyachu 
Led by Manon Arrougé @m_arrouge & Pablo Sevilla @sevillaisnotacity

Boisbuchet Technical Team:

Daniel Hernández @daniarmario Lucía Navas @lucianavassss
Yannis Hotz @yannishotz
Led by Dean Toepfer @deantoepfer

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WORKSHOP SEASON 2026 | Color Experiments with Fungi

This immersive workshop, led by design studio Aléa Work, explored color as a living, evolving process through fungi. Participants engaged in hands-on experimentation, dyeing with foraged mushrooms and natural pigments, while also experimenting with mycelium to degrade and transform color in existing textiles. Participants moved between individual investigations and collective experiments, testing pigments, growing mycelium on textiles, and documenting color transformations. Challenging the common perception of mycelium as monochrome, the workshop revealed an underexplored fungal spectrum in which color emerged through interaction, time, and material agency.

Season curated by : Guillermo Gil Fernández @guillegilfernandez & Pablo Sevilla @sevillaisnotacity  Tutors : Aléa @alea_work Miriam Josi @mimivert & Stella Lee Prowse @stellaleeps
Assisted by Paula Schulte @paula_schulte_  
Boisbuchet Media Team:

Video: Yachu Hsu (Joy) @xxyachu 
Led by Manon Arrougé @m_arrouge & Pablo Sevilla @sevillaisnotacity

Boisbuchet Technical Team:

Daniel Hernández @daniarmario Lucía Navas @lucianavassss
Yannis Hotz @yannishotz
Led by Dean Toepfer @deantoepfer

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WORKSHOP SEASON 2026 | Color Experiments with Fungi

This immersive workshop, led by design studio Aléa Work, explored color as a living, evolving process through fungi. Participants engaged in hands-on experimentation, dyeing with foraged mushrooms and natural pigments, while also experimenting with mycelium to degrade and transform color in existing textiles. Participants moved between individual investigations and collective experiments, testing pigments, growing mycelium on textiles, and documenting color transformations. Challenging the common perception of mycelium as monochrome, the workshop revealed an underexplored fungal spectrum in which color emerged through interaction, time, and material agency.

Season curated by : Guillermo Gil Fernández @guillegilfernandez & Pablo Sevilla @sevillaisnotacity  Tutors : Aléa @alea_work Miriam Josi @mimivert & Stella Lee Prowse @stellaleeps
Assisted by Paula Schulte @paula_schulte_  
Boisbuchet Media Team:

Photos : Yachu Hsu (Joy) @xxyachu 
Led by Manon Arrougé @m_arrouge & Pablo Sevilla @sevillaisnotacity

Boisbuchet Technical Team:

Daniel Hernández @daniarmario Lucía Navas @lucianavassss
Yannis Hotz @yannishotz
Led by Dean Toepfer @deantoepfer

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@alea_work Exploring decolorization as a way of creating prints through remediation with Pleurotus mycelium. Ongoing research supported @prohelvetia and @kupptextiles

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On retrouve notre @axel.n.co national (la maman de Myco-trottoir) pour vous pitcher Symbioses, un documentaire qui vous plonge dans le monde fascinant des champignons.

Bon, on ne va pas se mentir, on n’est pas très objectifs : on trouve ça génial. Primé en France et à l’international (S/O @fungifilmfest @climatfilmfestival), le film part à la rencontre d’agriculteurs, de mycologues, de chefs étoilés et de designers qui explorent le potentiel absolument dingue de ces organismes extraordinaires.

On vous souhaite un très bon visionnage sur Salamandre TV !

Rendez-vous le 30 septembre ! 🍄✌️

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🟣 #diy Architectures for #everyday People 🟣

There is something undeniably familiar and strikingly true about DIY ephemeral micro-architectures, often known as patentes. From small-scale objects to impromptu furniture and housing structures, their improvised designs and urban ingenuity celebrate the resourcefulness of ordinary people, through which folk wisdom transforms everyday life into a vibrant expression of #sustainable innovation.

By occupying gaps, edges, and residual spaces, patentes interrupt dominant spatial logics and produce alternative forms of urban life. They suggest that the city is not only designed from above, through plans and regulations, but continuously rewritten from below through countless acts of appropriation. They belong to a wider ecology of urban practices through which people negotiate scarcity, uncertainty, and changing circumstances. Each one records a gesture of care, resourcefulness, or resistance.

There is also an ecological intelligence embedded in their #construction logic; objects and materials that might otherwise be discarded are repaired, recombined, and re-signified. DIY architectures do not seek permanence; indeed, their meaning depends precisely on their capacity to appear, adapt, disappear, and reappear elsewhere. They are not simply objects in space but events, temporary arrangements of matter, bodies, actions, and circumstances.

Made with what is at hand and assembled through intuition rather than formal training, DIY architectures challenge architecture’s established hierarchies of authorship, expertise, and permanence, asking us to reconsider who is entitled to produce architectural knowledge, what constitutes #design and where architecture actually begins. In this sense, they are both humble and radical, revealing a quiet dialogue between people and their environment, where adaptability becomes a form of resilience and creativity becomes a language of survival. Their poetry lies precisely in this contradiction: that something so temporary can tell us so much about how we inhabit the world.

✍️ @melina.arvaniti.pollatou
read more in the 🔗 in bio
all credits are tagged on the 📸

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* A slightly rambling visual diary of summer.

Love, darkness, endless conversations, burning sun, insects humming and frogs leaping, thunder and lightning. Making things together, then destroying them together. Longing, exhaustion, little rushes of the heart. Laughing until we cried, crying until we laughed. Lying down. The forest, the lakeside, the river, scattered trees, the château.

When I was asked about my favorite moment at Boisbuchet, countless moments flashed through my mind. And I realized how precious it is to have so many moments you love that you simply cannot choose one.

Through more than forty summer nights, loose with moonlight, I closed my eyes and tried desperately to feel and keep everything.

Later, you learn that some people will leave in a hurry, while others will suddenly arrive. And somehow, the life ahead of you feels a little less likely to run dry, because these memories are now part of it.

To everyone who built this memory with me,
the stream keeps running softly. Thank you, summer wind, for blowing you into my memory.
Love you all (｡♥‿♥｡)

* 一份有點囉嗦的夏日視覺日記。
愛，黑暗，無盡的對話，炎日，蟲鳴蛙跳，電閃雷鳴，共創，摧毀，憧憬，疲憊，心動，大笑大哭，躺下，叢林，湖岸，河流，散開的樹，城堡。在被問到boisbuchet最愛的瞬間的時候，我的腦海裡閃過了無數的瞬間，這樣的感覺難以想像地珍貴：你喜愛的瞬間多到選不出來。在四十幾個月光散漫的夏夜中閉上眼睛我拼命感受。後來你知道有人會匆匆離開，但也會有人突然降臨。往後的人生卻因有這些回憶不再會乾涸不已。共建這份回憶的每一個人，溪流潺潺，謝謝夏日的風把你吹進我的記憶裡。

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Research on Living Materials —— Mycelium

Following an introduction to mycelium with @alea_work, I explored two main directions: material efficiency as a principle for structural strength, and adhesive-free assembly, taking advantage of mycelium’s natural ability to bind elements together.

This research investigates how living materials can offer new approaches to structure, assembly, and material economy.
Thanks to @stellaleeps @mimivert !!

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My final presentation at @boisbuchet (Color Experiments with Fungi workshop, led by @alea_work).

Ten days of designing through experimentation, craft, and the landscape itself.

These pieces were designed and built using materials gathered around the Domaine. Reclaimed bricks became the foundation of the stools, while deadstock fabric was buried with mycelium, allowing the organism to naturally decolorize the textile into one-of-a-kind patterns. The lamp’s frame was constructed using reclaimed chicken wire and was wrapped in silk, dyed with pigments extracted from onion skins.
Drawing from Japanese minimalism and the philosophy of Wabi-Sabi, the collection embraces imperfection, natural processes, and the character of reclaimed materials.

Less control, more collaboration: with materials, living organisms, and the landscape!

This collection marks the beginning of an ongoing exploration into giving discarded construction materials a second life through furniture and objects. More to come 💌

A special thank you to the Alea team (@alea_work) for fostering an environment where experimentation felt open, intuitive, and genuinely joyful!! 🌕

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Week three at @boisbuchet complete.

This week we welcomed @wesamasali & @boveda_tabicada, @alea_work and @xaviermanosa & @venathadrien for an extended 10 day workshop.

Wesam and Salvador introduced the centuries-old craft of tile vaulting, where participants worked together to construct a full-scale ceramic pavilion using thin clay tiles and traditional building techniques. Aléa invited participants to explore fungi as both a living material and a source of colour, experimenting with mycelium, and natural dyes to uncover new possibilities for regenerative material practice. Meanwhile, Xavier Mañosa and Hadrian Venant ceramics workshop explored the relationship between clay, surface, and form, culminating in a 3 day firing of the anagama wood-fired kiln.

Another inspiring week of experimentation, collaboration, and learning. Looking forward to seeing what next week brings.

Thanks to the the technical team
@lucianavassss
@daniarmario
@yannishotz

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Furniture longevity depends on a combination of factors. Historically, furniture that lasts across generations refers to handcrafted, one-of-a-kind pieces built so well that they stay in excellent condition and ‘remain in the family.’

In today’s mass-produced era, key to furniture that endures are circular design and manufacturing principles that rely on standardized materials, screwed (not bonded) assemblies, and replaceable parts that can be repaired over time.

The unfortunate reality is that the majority of contemporary furniture follows neither yesterday’s nor today’s definition of lasting across generations. Rather, it leans heavily on adhesives, engineered wood, thin veneers, hidden and highly specific components.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 9 million tons of furniture are discarded in the United States each year, with the volume increasing significantly during the pandemic -- surpassing 12 million tons.

In Part 2 of our LONG LIVE FURNITURE! series, we explore how furniture can - and should - circulate, to live a longer and more diverse life. Through real case studies and practical circular design strategies, we introduce four actionable pathways: design for longevity, right to repair, circular business models, and closing the loop.

Join this conversation, read the full article by clicking the Linktree in our bio.

#mebltransformingfurniture
#sustainablefurniture
#circulardesign #circulareconomy
#righttorepair

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