The Mills Fabrica Innovation Award is part of a longstanding partnership between The Mills Fabrica and Central Saint Martins, established in 2018 to support emerging designers working at the intersection of sustainability, innovation and material design. The award recognises exceptional student work with the potential to create positive environmental and social impact, connecting CSM graduates with industry expertise and opportunities to develop their ideas beyond the College.
This year's winning project, ‘Mycelial Minds’, explores the hidden communication systems of fungi, translating the electrical activity of mycelium into sensory light. Developed by MA Biodesign graduate Alice Offenbach, the interactive installation uses physical computing to transform the bioelectric signals of different fungal species into distinct light patterns and colours.
"The MA Biodesign nominations showcase a new generation of designers working through rigorous laboratory experimentation and scientific validation, these projects explore living refrigeration systems, interactive visualisations of mycelial networks, novel approaches to women's hormonal health, biofabrication using living 3D printing filaments, and mycelium-based waterproof biocoatings. Together, they reflect the programme's philosophy of translating cutting-edge biological research into regenerative design solutions that address pressing environmental and social challenges through experimentation, collaboration, and innovation." - Nancy Morgado Diniz, Course Leader, MA Biodesign
The judging process
The judging process brought together expertise from across design, sustainability and innovation, with the panel assessing the nominated projects for their ambition, originality and potential to address pressing environmental and social challenges.
-
Mycelial Minds by Alice Offenbach, MA Biodesign, 2026. Winner of The Mills Fabrica Innovation Award 2026.
-
Mycelial Minds by Alice Offenbach, MA Biodesign, 2026. Winner of The Mills Fabrica Innovation Award 2026.
-
Mycelial Minds by Alice Offenbach, MA Biodesign, 2026. Winner of The Mills Fabrica Innovation Award 2026.
Alice Offenbach, winner of the Mills Fabrica Innovation Award 2026
We spoke to Alice Offenbach about ‘Mycelial Minds’, her award-winning project exploring the hidden electrical communication of fungi. She shares how her background in neuroscience shaped the project, the challenges of working with living systems and the interdisciplinary expertise she drew on at CSM to bring the installation to life.
Give us a breakdown of your project.
Mycelial Minds is a biophilic lighting installation that translates the hidden electrical activity of mycelium (the root structure of mushrooms) into light. All living things - plants, fungi and humans, rely on electrochemical signals to grow and communicate. Mycelial networks communicate underground through these signals, but that intelligence is completely invisible to us. My project aims to capture those signals, quite literally, and turn them into something you can see and feel.
Using physical computing, I translated the electrical activity of different fungal species into different light patterns and colours, each species carrying their own bioelectric "languages," so each light behaves differently. I also created a wireless web app, allowing users to move between species and choose the kind of light, and experience, they want to have. It's an attempt to make the hidden language of nature visible, and to give people a reason to slow down and actually listen to it.
How did your project evolve during your time at CSM, and what challenges did you face bringing it to life?
I came into the MA Biodesign course at CSM from an undergraduate background in neuroscience, already drawn to non-human forms of intelligence and the ways in which art and design can make abstract neuroscience tangible. From the start I knew I wanted to interpret invisible rhythms of the natural world into something people could genuinely engage with. Working with living systems came with constant challenges. Getting accurate bioelectric data readings was one of the hardest parts, distinguishing real signals from electromagnetic noise took a lot of trial and error, and a lot of help from experts in the field. The project pulled me across the grow lab, the physical computing lab, and the metal workshop - three technical spaces within CSM that don't always overlap, but which were core to my project. The technicians were amazing at helping me bring my different ideas into one working piece.
What does receiving The Mills Fabrica Innovation Award mean to you?
I feel deeply honoured to have received this award - it means a lot that they see value in my work. It gives me the chance to keep developing my research with access to new expertise and global reach I didn't have before. CSM was the perfect place to develop my concept and build the prototype, but like most projects, there were more ideas than I had time. A big part of Mycelial Minds is about human experience and participation, and that's the piece I didn't get to fully develop at CSM. That's exactly where Mills Fabrica comes in, giving me the chance to connect with brands and companies. To actually be able to test these ideas in the real world feels like the natural next step.