Shaping the Future with Fungi

I'm here doing a project funded by the School of Arts Architecture and Design, exploring mycelium composites and their potential applications in consumer products. Myolium is the vegetative body of fungi. Outside of nature, we can use myolium to bind together organic materials. As myolium grows on it and starts that digestive process, it essentially binds itself to the material and acts a little bit like a glue. We can kind of exploit that really unique property of it to create super sustainable, regenerative composites for design and architectural applications. I'm exploring myolium from two main kind of ways. One is experimenting with the different substrate compositions or what the myolium is growing on and how the substrate and the way that you process it after growing affects the strength of your final kind of materials. And then on the other side of things, I do very more visual exploration of myolium composites, different treatments of the material after they've been cured. Right now, myolium composites have a very niche market out there today, most commonly being used in things like packaging and acoustic and thermal insulation. My focus is on creating, for example, a desk lamp that's made either from entirely or mostly a myolium composite in a way that, like, looks good and is something that people would actually interact with. The other main project I'm working on is a stool. I'm exploring different ways to really densify the material and create a truly suitable functional object that people can interact with just like they would any other piece of furniture. What I'm really hoping to get out of this is a better understanding of my ceiling based composites and how they can be used in replacement of less sustainable materials in the industrial design and product design fields so that, you know, I can continue to do what I love in terms of designing and creating, but in a way that aligns very much with my values and ization of ecological friendliness.