Steve Mushin is an industrial designer, illustrator, inventor, science storyteller and workshop facilitator working in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. His comedic science-focussed drawings and models, writing, design projects and workshops explore interactions between human-made machines and natural ecosystems.

Recent projects include Terra Wonder, a soil ecology themed sculptural playspace at CERES Environmental Park in Melbourne – which includes, amongst other things, the bus-size, 500:1 scale, mechanical millipede featured in Ultrawild. And Wombalana Wild Garden, an adventure playspace exploring Australia’s extinct megafauna – including, amongst other things, the minivan-size, 1:1 scale, mechanical diprotodon featured in Ultrawild. See www.stephenmushin.com for more on these designs.

Steve has over 20 years experience as an industrial designer, design workshop facilitator and science communicator. He has collaborated with scientists, engineers, farmers and steel fabricators on urban agriculture, composting and biogas technologies, zero emission master-plans, science communication and science-based adventure playgrounds.

Steve’s satirical future inventions were exhibited by The Australian Design Centre as part of CUSP (2013), a touring exhibition of futures design thinking. In August 2014, his exhibition Now If What Then: Farming Tokyo was exhibited as a solo show at Spiral contemporary art gallery in Japan, in collaboration with The Tokyo University of Agriculture. This exhibition presented 10 of Steve's projects which re-imagined the world’s largest city as self sufficient in food production. His designs have also been exhibited in Sydney at the Grace Cossington Smith Gallery (2015), at The Glasshouse in Port Macquarie (2016), and at MRPG gallery and Docklands Library Gallery in Melbourne (2017).

In 2012 Steve won the British Council's Big Green Idea Award for a low-cost aquaponics system, and in 2015 he was awarded an Australian Design Honours  for work in sustainability design education.

Steve managed technology projects at CERES Environment Park in Melbourne, Australia for seven years from 2003-2010. During this time he collaborated with scientists and engineers on community-scale biogas and composting toilet systems, a concentrated-solar powered cafe prototype, and a modular aquaponic urban farm.

Alongside his design and drawing work, Steve teaches a regular STEM class (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) for 10-13 year olds, covering electronics, physics and general making skills.