Yes, there’s furniture made out of fungus and you can grow one too, or purchase online for your home.
London-based designers Sebastian Cox and Ninela Ivanova are growing furniture using fungus, and will present their work for the first time at the 2017 London Design Festival.
In order to achieve the overall shape and texture of the piece, the duo told Quartz they’re in control of the growth process from the very beginning. They use mushroom mycelium, a cotton candy-like vegetative part of fungus that can be manipulated into different forms, and mix in woodchips from hazel and goat willow plants; the mixture is then placed in different molds until it takes the shape of the container.
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It’s not the the first time folks have attempted do-it-yourself compost furniture and clothes.
Companies across the US have been experimenting using microorganisms to grow clothes and shape furniture, according to Mashable.
New York-based biomaterials company Evocative collaborated with bioMASON, a start-up in North Carolina, to produce a furniture line using biofabrication --- a process that uses 3D printing to generate living organisms.
“What we do that is unique is that we use biological organisms to literally grow our product,” Eben Bayer, CEO of Ecovative told Popular Science. “In most cases, like when you brew beer, the organism you use is thrown away at the end. But the organism is the most beautiful part. And it is part of our furniture.”
The CEO of bioMason, Ginger Krieg Dosier, told Popular Science: “This is a better, cleaner way to make materials. Why use fire to harden bricks, which creates a lot of carbon pollution, when we can grow them at ambient temperatures?”
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Both companies believe in creating earth-like products to rid the world of toxins and unsustainable materials.