MYKOS
The Furniture/Leather Team
Overview
Project Summary & Research Focus
This team cultivated mycelium leather to pair with mycelium foam composites in the production of functional and aesthetic design objects. Their work explores the potential of bio-based materials in everyday applications, including designing a lamp and rebuilding
a chair with a mycelium foam seat, mycelium leather seat cover, and biowelded patterned seat back. The goal is to demonstrate the versatility and sustainability of mycelium in product design in order to inspire Yunnan's artisans to explore these new materials.
Our Goals
Growing mycelium leather that will then be utilized along with mycelium composite to create various design objects.
01
Explore the potential of bio-based materials in everyday applications.
02
Demonstrate the versatility and sustainability of mycelium in product design in order to inspire Yunnan's artisans to explore these new materials.
03
Mycelium Leather Lamp
A lamp made of mycelium leather, unlit.
Mycelium Leather Chair
A rebuilt chair with a mycelium foam seat, mycelium leather seat cover, and biowelded patterned seat back.
Mycelium Leather Lamp
A lamp made of mycelium leather, lit up.
Our Conclusions
It was very hard to learn how to grow mycelium leather because in most publications and patents, the details are hidden. We found some basic consistencies across approaches and formulated our method.
Because we wanted to start with waste materials, we tried using spent mushroom substrate to grow our leather. We don't recommend this, since it usually produced mold and wasted our time.
We read that at Ecovative and Mycoworks, pure mycelium production increased with regular flows of CO2 and oxygen.
So we built a DIY CO2 chamber by using fermenting yeast in water that released CO2 into the container where the leather was.
We cannot tell if this helped or not, but we did eventually get enough leather to cover our chair seat, by patching it together.
We proposed at the end of Winter quarter to refurbish a thrift-store chair with a mycelium foam seat, mycelium leather seat-cover, and some sort of biowelded seat back.
After all our struggles to grow mold-free material, it seems like a miracle to see it in real life, even better and more beautiful than we imagined. It truly was a labor of love.
We wanted to use laser-cut mycelium leather for the panels of our lamp, but when we held up the sheet of leather to the light, it was already so interesting for its natural growth patterns.
We decided to use the leather as it is. The warmth of the light and its off-white and golden hues feel natural and soothing.
Our Research Team
Abigail Ko
4th year, Design & Psychology
Focused on lamp and small object design along with updating team social media page
Abby Sommer
4th year, Design & Evolution, Ecology, and Biodiversity
Focused on background research and methodology for our experiments along with the chair design.
Cierra Mae Venzon
4th year, Design & Art History
Focused on creating chair and lamp forms for growth procedures along with laser cutting.
Emily-Mae McConihe
3rd year, Design
Focused on initial lamp designs and additionally tracks daily information, methods and
other data.