Next Gen Mycelium Materials

Mushrooms are healthy, mushrooms taste delicious! What we know as “mushrooms,” however, only refers to the fruiting stalk. For interior designers and furniture makers, however, what fungi do in the soil or wood to obtain nutrients is much more exciting. The so-called fungal mycelium refers to the totality of all hyphae, i.e., the thread-like cells of a fungus, whose growth guarantees the survival of a fungus in nature.

Targeted Control of the Fungal Mycelium

By specifically influencing the growth processes of the hyphae and the ingrowth of the fungal mycelium into molded parts, start-ups, material producers, and designers worldwide have succeeded in using fungi in a particularly sustainable process for the production of biocircular materials for packaging, textiles, material panels, or entire pieces of furniture.

The potential is so great that research institutions are now even working on developing manufacturing technologies for fungal-based high-tech applications. Researchers at empa in Switzerland are working on biodegradable mushroom batteries to power miniature sensors in agriculture and medicine.

In the “Mycoustics” project at the Fraunhofer IWU in Dresden, additive manufacturing and 3D printing methods are currently being combined with insights into the natural growth of mushroom mycelium to create both sound-reflecting and sound-absorbing surfaces in a single additive process step and use them for loudspeaker construction.

In his presentation, Prof. Dr. Sascha Peters will describe the current possibilities for the application of mushroom-based materials in interior design and furniture construction and provide an insight into the initial results of the “Mycoustics” research project for the 3D printing of a transmission loudspeaker using mushroom mycelium.

Program of interzum trend stage: www.interzum.com