The trophies for the 2025 W Awards are woven out of rush from Stngn and Lake stjuten in Sweden, as well as strips of plastic, using basket-weaving techniques. In Sweden, rush which grows in freshwater lakes, marshes and wetlands is usually harvested around Midsummer, when the roots loosen their grip. Rush crafts have become nearly extinct in Sweden, though a new education programme in thatching is emerging, so perhaps a turning point is near.Crafted using traditional weaving techniques and human-made and natural materials, each of Myckets trophies has a unique personalityCredit:Luke HayesThey each include a weight a chunk of the bedrock blasted out from underneath ArkDes to make way for new subway linesCredit:Luke HayesThe best way to harvest is to swim out and gather the reeds. Once you have collected a large bundle, you can float on it (rush can carry entire communities the Uru people of Lake Titicaca built islands of Totora reeds to evade aggressive neighbours and colonisers). After harvesting, the rush must be dried in a well-ventilated space, then soaked before crafting begins.The plastic strips in the trophies come from washed snack bags salvaged from the Catastrophe Carnival we organised last year everyone was invited to come dressed as their worst catastrophe as a way of processing the apocalypse. Each trophy also contains a small weight, a piece of the bedrock beneath ArkDes (the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design) in Stockholm. That bedrock is currently being blasted to make way for new metro lines, and we used fragments of the blasted stone in our project The Secret Garden (20242025).The trophies are made from rush as well as salvaged plastic and aluminium packaging from the collectives Catastrophe CarnivalCredit:Luke HayesWe see these trophies as mini-architectures. When we work with rush, we move through time-scales far beyond the human. Rush grows in cyclical loops, while the plastic and aluminium snack bags take hundreds of years to decompose. Working hands-on with rush and snack bags was not just about shaping trophies it is a way to understand time, relationships, and humanitys place in the world order. The inherent slowness of crafting both in the act of making and in the materials life cycle stands in opposition to accelerating capitalist efficiency. The form emerges in dialogue with the materials: we shape them, and they shape us. We call this process shape-shifting a design practice we are currently investigating to transform the architecture and design professions relationship to the Earth and our fellow beings.Mycket was the winner of the Prize for Research into Gender and Architecture at the 2024 W Awards. The collectives trophies will be presented to the 2025 winners at an event in Venice on 9 May.