Mycelium Matter(s)

Introduction

The Anthropocene Era

According to the United Nations environmental program, the “building and construction sector is responsible for 37% of global emissions, making the industry the largest emitter of greenhouse gases.” (United Nations, 2022). “This linear economic model of produce, use and discard” (Bitting et al., 2023) is no longer sustainable. The construction industry needs to become more circular, reducing material waste and greenhouse emissions. By studying biomimetics, we can use ‘Nature to inspire us to revolutionise the built environment’ (Biohm: Food Waste to Future Build, 2019 ).

Literature Review

This photo essay reviews the most important developments in mycelium material products and design projects over the last 10 years, with a particular focus on digital design methods for the production of large structures and installations.

The intent is to understand the limitations and advantages of using off-the-shelf mycelium finishes, fabrics, and products such as acoustics panels and insulation. Secondly, to evaluate the design and construction methods of furniture and large-scale projects made from mycelium. The information gathered from this review will identify the key challenges of using mycelium in construction projects and highlight potential research areas.

What is Mycelium?

Mycelium is the root of a fungus made of branching-out structures called hyphae that can grow on various substrates. Substrates are sourced from any waste stream of organic and inorganic matter. The hyphae act as a natural binder around the substrate particles, forming a mycelium composite, which is a “lightweight material formed by drying or heating the mycelium colony, which ultimately results in the hibernation or death of the fungal mycelium.” (Mohseni & Rocha Viera, 2023) The formed mycelium-based composites are a foam-like material with a hard external skin.

Mycelium is made into bricks and panels; it can be formed into self-supporting structures, and it can be digitally cut with a hot wire and digitally printed. (Biohm, 2016) Mycelium materials have many attributes: they are versatile, cold compostable, completely biodegradable, lightweight, fireproof, moisture-proof, acoustically absorbent and have good insulating properties. (Biohm, 2016) Furthermore, mycelium-building products can reverse carbon emissions as mycelium absorbs carbon. (Dessi-Olive, 2022)

Mycelium Materials and Building Products

Myco-materials are an international enterprise and are produced on an industrial scale. In this section I explore the market leaders in myco-material production such as mycelium fabrics and mycelium building products.

Mycelium Fabrics

Soft furnishing and fabrics are an essential part of the interior designer’s material palette, and there has always been a close alignment between Interior Design and Fashion. Recent developments in biomimetics, mycelium production, and the climate emergency have encouraged multinational fashion brands and renowned designers to collaborate with biotechnology companies producing mycelium fabrics.

Adidas™ used Mylo™, a mycelium leather produced by the biotechnology company Bolt Threads™ on the production of a mycelium Stan Smith trainer produced in 2019. There was an element of greenwashing as Mylo™ was used as an alternative to leather; however, the final design of the trainer was only fifty per cent recyclable. In 2022, Bolt Threads™ collaborated with Stella McCartney and launched ‘The Frayme Mylo™ the world’s first luxury handbag made from mycelium’ (StellaMcCartney.com).

Mycoworks™ is an international producer of structural mycelium and fine mycelia. Reihi™ is Mycoworks™ mycelium leather brand used by the furniture company Linge Roset as an upholstery fabric. (Figure 03).

MycoTex™, manufactured by Neffa™ in the Netherlands, is an embossed mycelium fabric that can be moulded into three dimensions. This unique material can be both opaque and translucent. It is formed into 3D objects, and designers are experimenting with it as a material for lighting design projects.

Building Products

Mugu™ manufactures sustainable wall panels, ceiling panels, and acoustic panels made from mycelium, a flooring range from waste streams, and a bio-polyurethane resin. Unlike other mycelium-based suppliers (Biohm and Bio-Grow), Mugu’s product has an array of colours, textures, and shapes focused on the interior designer market.

The Mugu™ Acoustic panel is a mycelium composite made from mycelium grown on a cotton and hemp substrate. It is produced in twenty-one colours and five different tessellation and surface designs. The Mugu™ Acoustic panel absorbs and diffuses sound.

Mugu’s wall and ceiling panel is a composite board called Pluma™.Made from mycelium grown on a substrate of cotton and hemp, finished with a coloured and textured mycelium skin. The product’s fire rating is (FR B-S2-d0) Combustible materials with a limited contribution to fire.

Biohm™

The award-winning biotechnology company Biohm™ is developing a mycelium strain that can consume plastic such as polyurethane and polyethene. Mycelium is nature’s recycler. Using waste plastic as a substrate, Biohm™ are producing mycelium insulation panels and eliminating waste simultaneously. Product literature shows that the mycelium insulation has a thermal conductivity of 0.03W/m.k to 0.024W/m.k and an A+ fire rating (Biohm, 2016). Furthermore, Biomhs insulation panels are a natural material, which does not contain the synthetic materials that cause the harmful toxic smoke (Green Trace Architect, 2021)

Ecovative™ was co-founded in 2007 and has developed and patented several methods of fabricating mycelium products. The company has also collaborated with supplying mycelium to design large bespoke structures. It is now one of the biggest suppliers of mycelium products, such as packaging materials, insulation boards, and food products, and it has developed AirMycelium™.

Grown Bio™, based in the Netherlands, produces mycelium bricks, insulation panels, acoustic panels, and mycelium grow kits. It can also collaborate with design teams to supply mycelium materials for bespoke projects such as the Growing Pavilion, which will be discussed later.

Fungi Furniture

This section explores mycelium’s small structural concepts and furniture designs. These projects are worth mentioning as they are often the initial experiments leading to larger structures.

Eric Klarenbeck exhibited the mycelium chair during the Dutch Design Week 2013. This chair highlighted the possibilities of using mycelium. The mould for the chair was 3D printed from Polylactic Acid (PLA) filament (a recyclable, natural thermoplastic polyester made from cornstarch or sugar cane). The mould was filled with a mycelium, water and powered straw mix, and the mycelium misgrew and knitted together PLA mould, which formed an outer skin. (Pallister, 2014) The manufacturing process used by Klarenback allowed for a complex form to be designed and 3D Printing; however, the construction method is fundamentally mycelium poured into a mould.

Further advancements in mould design and form have been developed by the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE). The MycoknitCompoSITe chair made using a kitted formwork as a mould. The mould was injected with Mycocrete (a mycelium paste) in semi sterile lab conditions and placed over a cardboard scaffold. The knitted formwork made of thin knitted tubes allowed the Mycocrete to breathe through the drying process, reducing shrinkage. After drying for approximately 8 days the chair to carry a body weight of approximately 70Kg.

A stool called Myco-merge constructed using the tensile capabilities of a rattan skeleton lined with hessian. A layer of an inoculated substrate was added to the structure and grown around the skeleton. The structure worked well in compression and the “final prototype withstood loads of 74kg”. (Nguyen, et al. 2022)

Bespoke Structures

Moulded Bricks and Panels

Phil Ross and Sophie Wang were one of the first people to promote the use of mycelium in construction with the design of the Mycotecture Vault. They are also the co-founder of MycoWorks™ which is one of the largest producers of mycelium. The Mycotecture Vault exhibited at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf as part of the 2009 Eat Art exhibition. This simple arch built from cast bricks highlighted the potential use of this exceptional material.

The Growing Pavilion 2014

The Growing Pavilion designed by Biobase Creations a Dutch creative studio “that specialises in installations, projects and storytelling about the transition towards a regenerative and circular world.” (Biobased Creations, n.d.) The design team who designed the Growing Pavillion were cross-disciplinary led by Pascal LeBoucq. The circular structure made from a wooden framework filled with bespoke mycelium bound composite (MBC) supplied by GrowBio™. The design of the interior space was an exhibition that promoted the properties of mycelium in fashion, design and construction. This pop-up structure and temporary events space was part of Dutch Design Week 2019.

The Hy-Fi June 2014

The concept for Hy-Fi, designed by The Living in 2014, engineered by ARUP won MoMA’s Young Architects Program, displayed in the courtyard of MoMA PS1 in New York. The MBC bricks supplied by Ecoavative™ were individually caste in custom moulds, dried in the oven transported to the site, and assembled. The bricks formed three chimneys open at the base, and the structure was 13 meters tall. Hi-Fi was the first and tallest outdoor pavilion and after three months was demolished and composited.

Mycotree – Seoul Bienale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017

Mycotree was designed using structural geometry to compensate for the low strength of mycelium, which is weak in tension and bending. The team designed a structural form placing the mycelium in compression-only configurations (Dessi-Olive, 2022). “The mycelium portion of the structure is a metaphor for the load-bearing component of the building; the grid at the top represents the floor being supported” by the Mycotree.

The stability attained through the geometry of Mycotree suggests that mycelium could be used as a structural element in building design.

The Monolith Micelio – 2018 Academic Jonathan Dessi Olive Kansas State University

Monolith Micelio was an alternative response to block and brick construction. The structure was built in situ using formwork that “needed to be strong enough to support the wet substrate while maintaining the form” (Dessi-Olive, 2022). The design was grown from one ton of colonised hemp supplied by Ecoavative.

Building a site form outside exposed the untreated mycelium structure to the elements, causing it to crack, decay, and become “infected with unfavourable organisms and potentially dangerous moulds” (Dessi-Olive, 2022).

An alternative to the in-situ method when forming large structures is Bio-Welding or myco-welding. Meaning the growth process has two stages. Stage one, the smaller elements are grown in moulds; stage two, the elements are assembled to make a larger form. The large structure is kept in a sterile growth environment so the elements can naturally bond together, and the growth process is stopped by heat. (Dessi-Olive, 2022). Mycelium can also self-heal so the material can recover its original properties after damage (Elise Elsacker, 2021)

Mycocrete

Bioknit self-supporting structure was created in 2022 by the Living Textile Research Group. Lead by Jane Scott as part of the (HBBE) 3-Dimensional knitted forms. The tubular forms were designed on a knitting machine and filled with mycocrete-paste. The knitted formwork allows the oxygen to circulate better when the forms are drying hence, the structure shrank less when drying. “The combination of textiles and mycelium presents a compelling new class of textile biohybrid composite materials for new application in the construction sector” (Kaise, et al., 2023) The dome structure is 2000mm high.

“The Living Room is a mycelium-knit biohybrid architecture consisting of an exposed knitted formwork on the interior and a smooth mycelium plaster on the exterior, creating a monolithic 4m freestanding structure.” (Jane, S. 2023, p208)

The wool knitted formwork for the living room structure was stretched between a scaffold structure. The wool was then covered with Mycocrete paste. Once the mycelium had grown and dried a large-scale free-standing “double curve structure” (Jane, S. 2023,) was formed. The Living Room was exhibited at ‘the more or less’ exhibition in the Farrell Centre 2023

Digital Manufacturing

Digital manufacturing processes have not always been successful in mycelium. CNC milling cannot cut mycelium cleanly due to how the hyphae bind’s with the substrate. Six-axis robotic abrasive hotwire cutting was carried out on mycelium blocks formed from both dead and living mycelium blocks. After cutting the live mycelium block, the 2mm mycelial coating could regenerate on the cut planes of the block. (Elise Elsacker, 2021) This process produces negative and positive forms, opening up huge possibilities regarding the design of structures using large mycelium structures.

Blast Studio

Blaster Studio creates 3D-printed larger-scale projects produced by printing mycelium-based composites which could not be made using a moulding technique. The organic substrate is made from used paper cups inoculated with fungal spawn and made into a biomass paste. The paste is pushed through an extruder and was produces a layer at a time. Each module was 210mm high, ten were produced and stacked form a column which is 2100mm high (Mohseni, et al., 2023)

Conclusion

The findings in this essay have highlighted the constraints when working with mycelium, such as setting up a sterile making space to stop contamination, preparing storage that can be temperature-controlled for the experiments when growing and drying, testing the most appropriate mycelium strains and substrate recipes for each specific application, and anticipating the percentage of shrinkage during the drying process.

A potential research project inspired by the Myco-merge Project (mycelium rattan and hemp) would be to explore a range of biodegradable structural materials such as cardboard tubes, bamboo and willow to make a skeletal substrate for large-scale structural projects. Furthermore, to explore tensile structures made from natural materials such as rattan and other fabrics which can be sources from a waste stream to form moulds designs for free standing mycelium structures.

Finally, we will explore how to add colour to mycelium products, such as using the plethora of coloured PLA filaments to create moulds filled with mycelium and organic paints, dyes, and coatings with mycelium.

KEYWORDS

Mycelium, Biomaterials, Digital Design and Maufacturing, Circular Economy.

REFERENCES & IN TEXT CITATION

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