May - the potential of biofacture
Written for and originally published by Homes & Gardens
In recent months I’ve written notes from the workshop and woodland, but I’m yet to mention our laboratory. At risk of overstating the eminence of the room we call our lab, it is a storage unit near our workshop, with no windows. It contains basic kitchen equipment, like a fridge, and basic science equipment, like an autoclave. We have lab coats too, to give any member of our team working in the lab an authoritative feel, mostly for placebo effects. With this simple equipment we are growing the fibrous cells of mushrooms, known as mycelium, into shaped objects. Specifically, we’re growing lightshades for restaurants and homes around the UK, and overseas.
Increasingly, ’biofacture’, which is the growing of an object using biological processes, is developing from left-field graduate projects to a viable way of re-making material culture. There are examples of clothes grown from algae, vessels made from bacterially-grown cellulose, and even IKEA are apparently exploring mycelium packaging.
For a nature nut like me, the diversity of materials coming from nature’s fabrication is thrilling. If we can create a commercial value for biological diversity, it will surely be further protected. Imagine there’s a yet-unknown bacteria in a swamp which can secrete electrically-conductive compounds. If we could precisely use that secretion we could, for example, ‘print’ biofactured circuit boards, perhaps even whole smartphones when combined with other grown matter. As mineral materials become more scarce or face greater taxation, that would be of huge value to our factories. That this is nothing new is also reassuring. For all of history we’ve used ‘bio’ materials. In the early stages of research into our mycelium research, my collaborator Ninela Ivanova discovered Hungarian gypsy traditions of using fungal skins to make shoes. Even ‘Otzi’, the 5,000 year old ‘Iceman’, preserved in the Alps, carried a pouch made of mushroom fibre, she explained as we tested different species of fungus’ growth rates with different tree species from our woodland.
In our lightshades we are using fungus to bind wood. We chip waste wood from our coppice, sterilising it before adding a culture of fungal mycelium. The long fibres of the mycelium grow through the woodchip, as they would through a log in the woodland, binding it together. At this point, we form the now ‘myceliated’ wood into a shape, before dehydrating to stop the growing process. Once dry, we have our composite material which is light, strong and soft.
Better still, we are able to harness the immune system of the fungus to grow faster and stronger each time. Using the same species of timber from the same woodland, our fungus knows what to expect when it sets to work on the woodchip, and improves at its task. This kind of highly refined intelligence is offered for free by Mother Nature, and we are only just learning how to work with it.
With humble lights, we are seeking to domesticate the idea of grown objects. I relish the reaction people have to mycelium when we show the lights in exhibitions or pop-up shops; some stroke them, some won’t go near, many sniff them. I think it’s an essential part of the development of a modern sustainable life to embrace this new generation of materials, while reconnecting with forgotten ones.
For compendia of this fascinating subject, I strongly recommend Franklin Till’s fabulous book Radical Matter and Seetal Solanki’s book Why Materials Matter.