Arc Nouveau, a biodegradable acoustic panel made with mycelium

Arc Nouveau

a biodegradable acoustic panel grown with mycelium Ellen Comhaire Bachelor graduation project | Industrial Product Design Howest | Academic year 2018 - 2019

Product design was my first choice of study for a higher education 18 years ago, but as life goes, I made quite a detour before finally ending up there. After years on the background, the desire started dawning upon me again during one of my many lyrical praises of my drilling machine.

It was my present to myself for my 30th birthday. I could have known then already...

I always made things for myself, entered a woodworking course, made furniture and lamps from waste I found, helped to renovate my house and thought of beautiful solutions for ugly problems. But it was a desire for societal change that made me take the final step towards deepening my knowledge of materials, production methods and user centered design. I didn’t start with graduating in mind. I was just strolling along wherever life took me (back again), and I simply enjoyed it too much to stop.

Combining a job, later two, and part time education was hard. It doesn’t leave much resources for other things in life. There were periods of joy and excitement, but also months of struggle and survival, up to a point where I had to give up for a while and accept a feeling of defeat. The path was one of rediscovery and while stretching my brain within this new environment of creation, my life has been stretching along in and out of my comfort zone.

None of this I could have done without the loving support of my girlfriend, friends and family, my loved ones who often had to play second violin to home-assignments. They have been by my side every step of the road. I also feel very grateful to my colleagues at Stad Gent, who never complained when I changed my working schedule to school calendars again or when I stayed away for 3 months to do my internship, and who always asked how my exams had been. They cheered with me for my results and were always curious to know what was next. A big and warm “Thank you”!

I would also love to thank my colleagues at Glimps for such an enthusiastic, valued, powerful start of my design job experience on our impactful mission together. Dreaming big, jumping without knowing when we could hit the ground, and believing in the sustainable ways of biofabrication to push the planet forward. Searching our way through the woods, learning at high speed and making time for fun and thinking of the next CSAproject (crazy shit ass project) we want to create. To Leon Deverick of Mycelia I am grateful for the very pleasant, supportive and communicative cooperation on growing the panels. He took a lot of weight off my shoulders in the last two months with his help and preparations.

And last but not least, I am very thankful for the understanding and flexible attitude of many of the Howest teachers. They have always helped me search for a solution when my work came in the way of my study. Their support encouraged me to follow through till graduation and in hard times they took time to lend an ear and help me put things in perspective.

Finally, the fact that I can graduate with the design of a fully circular product that contributes to human well being, is a true gift. It comprises my values and interests and the future I see for design in this quickly transitioning era (within the boundaries of a product). The fact that I can share this open source for other people to use to their benefit, is something for which I am grateful to Mycelia, Aurora and Glimps. As I believe the open source model is the quickest and fairest way for learning and improving our ways of mining, producing and using together.

Preface

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Content Conten

Preface Table of content Introduction About me Glimps My internship The product outcome Project timeline Design brief

3 4 6 7 8 10 12 14 16

Mycelia - client Aurora - client List of demands Context of use Conclusion The predecessors

17 18 19 20 23 24

Mycelium materials

26

Mycelium How to make it Acoustic qualities Physical qualities

27 28 30 31

Production research

32

Some biocomposites and how the’re made Other techniques Interviews with experts

33 38 41

Material tests Heat press tests Temperatures Time and thickness Turnarounds One or more pieces White fluffy layer Blending or not Adding binders Conclusion Connection tests Overview tests Wooden planks Wooden plugs Linen tissue Physical connections Chemical connections Conclusion

46 48 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 60 61 62 65 66 68 69

Prototypes Design limits Making the matrix Making the moulds Choice of substrate Inoculation Turning and demoulding Final concept Final choices Product lifecycle Technical drawings Cost calculation How to use them Project evaluation What I learnt Resources Special thanks

Form research Mood board Approach Sketches on paper and post-its Adobe Illustrator pattern madness Clay models Adobe Photoshop simulations Feedback round

70 71 72 73 74 76 77 78

Attachments

80 82 83 86 88 90 92 94 96 97 98 100 101 102 103 105 107 108

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Introduction

My love for design comes from both an appreciation of quality products in my own life and a societal commitment: what good is a product if it doesn’t make a difference?

Therefore the user experience takes on a big role in my designs: how does it feel to touch or use the product? How does this product reflect our values?

In 2016 I won 2nd prize in the Nimblebee design award and I have been selected for several international programs for creative leaders, such as the Unschool of Disruptive Design Fellowship in Berlin (2016) and the DC Living lab in Aarhus (2017).

Veneer (De)Light desk lamp, Chocolate innovation for Libeert, Soap bottle render.

About me

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Glimps is a Ghent based design company with a mission to shape, inspire and empower the transition of our society towards sustainable material use. As a cross-disciplinary team they combine the expertise of sciences, design, architecture and arts to make a circular future tangible - a future which is good for our planet and all its inhabitants.

They do so by creating experiences and products to inspire and empower individuals, organisations and companies to push the existing boundaries. They are deeply connected to and are a driving force in a worldwide network of innovators. In this, sharing knowledge is such an important aspect that they make all the knowledge they gain open source (unless a client would oppose in relation to their project).

In 2018 Glimps won the Post-Fossiel Gent contest in Ghent with their ‘Fitting room of the future’ installation The Growing city.

Left page: kombucha leather bow tie and origami jewellery by Lynn Josephy, Mycelium lamp made in partnership with Permafungi Right page: Post-fossiel Gent, The Growing City booth by Ravi Bellardi, Jasper Bloemen and myself.

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Glimps

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Since I was working part time as a product designer for Glimps at that time, my full time internship was mostly an opportunity to explore things I never got to during the usual working hours. I attended the Mycomaterial training for professionals to learn to work with mycelium professionally, did my first personal biofabrication tests, designed an installation for the Supernova festival and conducted some context research for a biodegradable urn that was being made by another student under the wings of Glimps.

My internship created more in-depth insight in both the beauty of biofabrication in terms of circularity and the struggles encountered in production. It also made me realise how much can be done within a basic setup with hacking and creative thinking, and how much potential for improvement there is within the biofabrication context... and the story is only just starting to unfold itself (at an industrial scale).

Left: Supernova installation by me.

Right: Supernova installation, “P� of the Glimps logo in the making, and as a finished mycelium product.

10 10

My internship

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This design project is the answer to the question of two of Glimps’ partners. First there was the question of Aurora Sustainability to do material research to create open source designs and production processes to share with their mushroom growing community.

Aurora created hubs for people to grow mushrooms by using both energy and material waste streams from local industries. This results in mycelium as a byproduct, which in its turn can be used as soil enhancer or to grow products, creating a fully circular production.

This was followed by the interest of Mycelia in a design for acoustic panels for their meeting room. They had seen the Fungalogic panels (picture) and - as they are suffering from the bad acoustics in their meeting room - they wanted to grow their own panels to use inhouse. Mycelia wanted a good looking and functional product that accomodated in the atmosphere of the room as well as reflected the overall company culture. They agreed to make the project open source and share the insights with the biofabrication community.

This way both Mycelia and Aurora could benefit from the project.

Fungalogic mycelium acoustic panels and lamps.

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The product outcome

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Design brief, Product and Production research

January - February 2019

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Project timeline

Material tests

February - March 2019

Form research

April 2019

Connection tests and Prototyping

Production

June 2019 April - May 2019

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Design brief Design brief

Mycelia is a local mycelium producer.

They grow mycelium as a base for other professionals mushrooms producers. These are used mostly for culinary or medicinal purposes, but the company is currently also experimenting with mycelium materials (also called mycomaterials) to make products.

They specialise in a few edible but also a wide variety of non-edible species.

This assignment is their first step into a fully designed and finished mycelium product.

They have the know-how of the species and production, and we bring the design knowledge to the table.

Apart from growing mycelium, Mycelia also organises courses for mushroom growers and enthusiasts. The moulds used for making the acoustic panels will also be used for educational purposes as the trainees can practice with them for making their own first mycelium product.

Inside a Mycelia growing container.

Mycelia - Client

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The fabulously committed duo of Aurora Sustainability Consultancy train, mentor and support individuals, start-ups and companies to help them move towards an integrative circular economy and sustainability based business model.

In the past years they were the Scottish winner of the Climate Launchpad competition and finalist in the Highlands & Islands Food & Drinks Awards, and the Scottish environment business awards (twice).

For their Green grow project they developed smart containers in which an ideal environment is created for mushrooms to grow. Waste heat and unused bioresources, like sawdust, spent grains, coffee waste, etc. are recovered from local industries for the mushroom growth. This provides everything one needs to produce edible mushrooms and mycelium. Aurora allocates these to the market through dry meal boxes, while the container renter can enjoy their own produced bio-fertiliser and mycelium material developments. All this is done within an open source community.

Aurora’s growing container and dry meal box (both in a prototype version before the launch).

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Aurora - Client

Mycelia’s question was to design acoustic panels that: MUST

• improve the sound quality of the room audibly: cover 35% of the floor surface,

• be beautiful to look at: stylish, aesthetic, • be light weight: max. 5kg/m², • be able to withstand a few bumps, so no sharp edges or small parts sticking out,

• reflect the company’s atmosphere: soft shapes, friendly and open feel,

• be easy to produce in-house: max.

50x50cm for good sterile conditions,

• reusable moulds for educational purposes.

NICE TO HAVE

• incorporate indirect light in the design:

LEDs on the back side, aimed backwards,

• elegant solution for electric connections of the LEDs hidden or matching cable.

Their problem was that they know how to make mycomaterials, but they don’t have much design experience or relevant know-how.

List of demands

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Mycelia has a large room which they use for very different gatherings. It’s the meeting room and place where they receive guests, give presentations and trainings, but it’s also the party room where they’ll give a toast or put on some music.

It’s a large, more or less rectangular space with one projection wall, two doors and a large window. The floor is an oak styled laminate, and the tables are also wood covered, accompanied by stylish design chairs. One of the walls leading from the window to the presentation wall features a large 90x250cm mussel lamp made by one of the creative employees.

It is a friendly, communicative, open company with a very diverse team, and you can see this in the friendly colours and warm layout of this space.

The only problem is that the acoustics are horrible. This makes one conversation possible, but two already quite hard, let alone having many different people in there trying to discuss something.

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Context of use

The meeting room ceiling is covered with square lamps (60x60cm). Since the mussel lamp also is built up more or less of multiples of 30x30cm, this quickly led to the conlusion that this should be the size of the panels.

This also is a nice and workable size for sterility, for stocking and for growth in any environment. This size also just fits a regular oven for drying, which makes it ideal for nonprofessionals.

The walls for attachment seemed stronger than expected (as we uncovered a piece during a renovation in the attached room): OSB boards instead of just a wood construction and plaster plates, as we first thought. This made the weight less of an issue.

From the ceiling construction we could see however that we could only reach a few meters into the room to make a hidden electric connection. Therefore we decided if there would be lamps, that we would use a cable and plug that matched the room, similar to the mussel lamp’s connection. This would also allow a seperate powerline.

The existing spotlights could be used to light up the front of the panels to highlight them, while the backlight on the panels would create a more cosy atmosphere.

This and previous two pages: Mycelia meeting room with tables, chairs, mussel lamp with cable, ceiling lamps, spotlights, wall build-up and ceiling wood construction.

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Conclusion

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Acoustic panels aren’t new at all, neither are mycelium acoustic panels, yet they are nearly as new as can be. Mycelium is the biologically grown binder that keeps the fibres together and consists of threads of fungal ‘roots’. There is only one company in the world producing acoustic panels out of mycelium materials as far as we know. A few artists and other mycelium enthusiasts have made their own designs, but none of these are commercially produced or distributed.

On this page you can see some examples of acoustic panels, which are probably about half of what exists at the moment.

Most of these are grown in moulds and have taken the shape of those moulds. Only the two examples in the middle row have been produced differently as far as I can tell. The first is made with a mushroom based flexible foam, and the second is heat pressed into shape.

Left page:1st row - Ecovative Mycofoam Sinewave and Hive Tile, RIBA North by Accra and Mae-ling Lokko.

2nd row - Ecovative Weave Tile and Mycoboard Quarter turn.

3rd row - Benjamin Kapoor, Jonas Edvard, Mogu.

Right page: Mogu.

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The predecessors

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Mycelium materials

Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus or fungus-like bacterial colony. It consists of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae.

Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are found in and on soil and many other substrates.

Through the mycelium, a fungus absorbs nutrients from its environment. It does this in a two-stage process. First, the hyphae the branching filaments that make up the mycelium - secrete enzymes onto or into the food source, which break down biological polymers such as lignin and cellulose - into smaller units such as monomers. These are then absorbed into the mycelium.1 It is this process we tap into for making mycelium materials. The mycelium feeds from the cellulose to grow. By growing it creates hyphae that connect all the fibers to transport the nutrients, thus creating a 3D structure that connects the fibers in one big clump. The mycelium becomes the binder between the cellulose fibers with its chitin as a powerful source of material qualities. The more chitin the mycelium contains, the more flexible, stronger, water resistant and safe (of contamination) a material becomes.2 Mycelium at eyesight and microscopic view.

Mycelium

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Basic steps for making mycelium materials3 1. Work sterile. This is very important as we work with living materials. This means there is competition for nutrients in the microbiology.

Practically this means that if your growth comes into contact with spores of mould, which are in the air all around us, chances are it will contaminate your work, thus growing mould that competes the mycelium in its growth.

2. Sterilise your substrate. Any cellulose based (woody) fibres will do as a growing base: e.g. hemp, straw, corn. This can be pasteurized (min. 30 minutes at 80°C), but sterilising in an autoclave is safer still (min. 15 minutes at 121°C). This kills any microbiology living in the substrate, paving the way for the mycelium to feed on the fibres.

3. Let it cool down. The substrate needs to be cooler than 30°C. If it is too hot, the mycelium will be harmed and die.

4. Inoculate the substrate. Once cooled down, you can mix it with a 5-10% (of the weight) of the mushroom spawn. Species currently used are Oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus), Turkey tail (Trametes versicolor), Shiitake (Lentinula edodes) and Reishi (Ganordema lucidum).

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How to make it

5. Seal the mix in a growing bag or box (HDPE or PP with a HEPA-filter) for a few days first and redivide into the mould after 5 days, or immediately put the mix in a closed off mould. Sterility is still important at this point, so no other microbiological life should be able to enter the mould. The mycelium is alive, so it needs oxygen and will produce CO².

Therefore it is advisable, particularly for thick pieces, to leave some room in the mould for air.

6. Let it grow for 10 -14 days in a dark, moist and warm environment (25°C is perfect). If exposed to light, it will grow mushrooms to reproduce.

7. Demould it and leave to grow for another few days. This creates a fluffly white outer layer which will make the product much stronger.

Less sterility is needed now as the mycelium has become very strong and resistant.

8. Dry in the oven for a few hours at 60°C or heat press for flatter products.

There are many parameters in the process that can vary, but these steps are needed every single time.

Left page: Oyster, Turkey tail, Shiitake and Reishi.

Right page: Autoclave, demoulding a piece, a growing bag with HEPA filter and a fully grown mycelium piece with a fluffy white layer.

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A 2013 research article says that in comparison to the traditional petroleum based foams, the mycelium based acoustic absorbers show promise to provide a low cost high performing alternative to traditional foam based boards, that also include the advantage of biodegradation for environmentally conscious disposal when the product is at its end-of-life use.5 This subject is not widely researched yet, though the first findings are promising. Many parameters can be expected to have an influence on the acoustic qualities: the growing conditions, species, substrate size, mix and structure can all impact the porosity and other characteristics of the object.

Since this is still a pioneering field, standardization in the production process is still in progress and only concerns the major companies. Overall, a bio-composite is not expected to show the same reproducibility, in comparison neither to synthetic materials nor to mono-component natural materials, as it regards to mechanical and thermodynamic parameters.6

Cardboard mycelium panel by Critical Concrete4.

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Acoustic qualities

The qualities which do come back in any mycelium material, are:

• lightweight: often the weight per volume is compared to that of expanded polystyrene (EPS);

• strong: mycelium always adds strength

compared to the substrate without mycelium, and has a high compression strength, definitely when heat pressed;

• low thermal conductivity: like EPS, mycelium

materials mostly feel warm by touch, meaning the thermal insulation is good;

• good acoustic insulation: due to its

porous structure, it has good acoustic insulation qualities;

• fire retardant: mycomaterials char, but don’t burn;

• water resistant: when pouring water on mycelium, it will form droplets;

• biodegradability: mycelium materials are fully biodegradable.

Mycelium after burning by Johan Wijesinghe7.

Water resistency test by Critical Concrete8.

Physical qualities

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Production research research

To get to know the options, I started researching the wider field of biocomposites: which ones are already available and how are they made. I noticed:

• many of them had a form of pressure in their process, cold or hot;

• some had single moulds (negative), some double moulds (negative and positive);

• some fibres where processed wet, some dry; • while the toxic formaldehyde is often

• • •

emitted from the process, epoxy resins are still commonly used, which don’t biodegrade and are toxic when burnt; when no resin is used for binding it is used as a finish layer for durable use; fibre lengths are a very important factor in shaping both the visual and physical properties of the end product, temperatures and pressure vary a lot.

In the next pages you will find some processes I looked into to learn from. The highlights show what I found interesting to research for mycelium materials too (with enough time).

Biocomposite specimens made by Washington State University faculty and staff.

Some biocomposites and how they’re made

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Organoid Technologies GmbH

Medium Density Fibre Board (MDF)

Natural materials are mixed with an ecological binding agent and then pressed together into a thin layer. They mostly start with an inflatable inner form that can be shaped freely. It is placed under pressure and covered with a vacuum film. Organic materials are ground to create the desired degree of fineness and texture and then combined with a natural binder. This mixture is then sprayed onto the form. While the sprayed-on mixture is still damp and flexible, it is covered with another vacuum film and hermetically sealed.

With the application of negative pressure, the moulding is compressed and then hardens into its final form.9,10

Wood waste > Sorting out wood waste in different density classes > Chipping the wood in a mill to uniform sizes > Grating the chips > Washing chips to remove contaminants, e.g. sand > Removing metal with magnet machine (important!) > Preheating the chips (in defibrator) to soften them and squeeze resins out of them (to prevent spots and defects on the end result) OR Blasting them with steam and mixing with resin > Drying the fibres > Defibrating the chips into uniform fibres > Drying the fibres in a tube dryer which uses waste gasses from the MDF-plant > Stocking the dried fibres to assure sufficient supply/ stock > Mix fibres with chemical adhesive to

stick fibres together (which determines many of the physical qualities of the end material) > Spreading the dried fibres at a consistent rate depending on mat height and density > Precompressing a continuous fibre mat to assure a continuous good mat for the continuous heat press (to remove air between fibres) > Hot pressing the fibre mat continuously at high temperature and pressure (making it to 1/40th of the original thickness) > Cutting at uniform lengths > Stacking for cooling on a giant wheel > Quality check > Packing.11,12,13

Compak eco-boards for construction

Steico wood fibre insulation boards

Hemp structures by Werner Aisslinger

Annual renewable crop waste (as harvested) > Breaking raw material down into particles > Storing > Weighing the batch > Spraying with resin (no formaldehyde) > Forming into mats > Steam heated (160°C) pressing up to 4 mats at a time (in layers on top of each other) + 1000ton pressure force > Trimming to size > Quality check.14,15

Wood > Chopping into chips > Adding water to make a pulp > Adding additives > Forming a mat > Pressing mechanically > Drying at 160-220°C > Cutting and moulding > Packaging.16

He made a house and chair consisting of more than 70% natural fibers such as hemp and kenaf, bound together with acrodur, a waterbased acrylic resin. The curing procedure thus releases no harmful substances and water is its only byproduct. It is compression moulded, and thus suitable for low-volume production.17,18

In this process the PU-binder prevents costly drying lines in woodbased processes. It is important to consider stocking dry or wet in the mycelium process.

Here the chips are pulped with water, which is very different from any other board I found.

It resembles the paper making process but for thick plates, also creating a very big variety in directions of the fibres. The fibres themselves also seem to end up thinner.

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Wanhua eco boards for construction19

Biozol Eco hemp flex insulation panels20

Jiangyin Yanli hemp fiberboard21

First the light parts of the straw are removed in a cyclone seperator. The stronger, fibrous remains are then “flaked� into smaller bits and dried. A (formaldehyde and acid free) polymeric diphenyl methane diisocyanate (pMDI) resin is used to bind the fibres, creating three chemical reactions: it will create a surface film for protection, harden the fibres and create a network structure. The resin is cured in the heat press.

Hemp fibres are bound with BICO fibres (2 different polymers, PE/PP or PE/PET, so oilbased).

Boric salt is added as fire retardant and as protection against mould.

The hemp insulation can also be glued with corn starch, which is 100% organic.

These are thermoformed at one step with flax as base material and composite material as surface material. They use the agglutination of heated chemical fiber (polypropylene, PP) rather than use any glue adhesive.

This claims to be an energetically undemanding production and thus very environmentally-friendly, although plastics are used.

The plant fibre used in fibrilia sheet is degradable and environmentally-friendly, which overcomes the non-degradable shortcomings of PU products. They claim to be 100% biodegradable, but the breaking down of PP will leave microplastics in the environment.

Hempcrete for construction and insulation22,23

Margent Farm hemp bioplastic panels24

Banana paper25,26

Hempcrete is a mixture of hemp hurds (shives) and lime, and pozzolans (ashes). These are either used in blocks or directly mixed and put into a structure on-site. Like other plant products, hemp absorbs CO² from the atmosphere as it grows, retaining the carbon and releasing the oxygen.

This is a hemp based alternative to plastic, metal and cement board. The sheet is bound with a sugar based resin made entirely from agricultural waste, containing corncob, oat hulls, flax shives, bagasse, etc.

Agricultural banana waste is ground until it resembles sawdust and is washed to remove natural resins. Used paper is thrown into a pulper with water. These paper fibres will be the base for the banana fibres. Both fibres are sprayed onto a continuous band. The speed of the band and pressure of the sprinkling system dictate the thickness of the paper depending on the features needed in the end product. The paper is then threaded into a set of drums and another endless band, made of absorbent material to further dry the paper. Then the final aesthetics are brought to the paper.

Theoretically 165 kg of carbon can be absorbed and locked up by 1m3 of hempcrete wall during manufacture.

The fibres sequester carbon, locking it in and stopping it from being released back into the atmosphere, resulting in a very lowcarbon product.

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Moulded fibre packaging applications Collected waste paper (cardboard or newspapers) is weighted and put into the hydropulper. Here paper is mixed with warm water 43-65°C while mashing it. The hot water swells the fibres so they fall apart after 20 minutes (pulp with consistency of oat meal). This mixture is pumped through a twostage filtration where, in the first cycle, heavy impurities (small stones, sand, paperclips) are separated and all light impurities are separated (wood, plastic, polystyrene, and adhesive tapes). Pure pulp is stored in tanks and ready for subsequent use. The last step of the pulp preparation is its mixing to reach the required operation parameters.

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Other techniques

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The second production step is pumping pulp into the forming line where it is sucked onto moulds (bronze, plastic or aluminium, depending on how long the factory wants to use them, covered with a stainless steel mesh so the pulp can be sucked through them evenly) with a vacuum. After rinsing off the excess pulp with water jets, the transfer moulds are sprayed with water and a lubricant to ensure the forms won’t stick onto them.

After residual water has been exhausted, the already finished product is transferred to a drying conveyor with the transfer moulds. The drying process is automatically monitored; during this process humidity, temperature, and volume of drying air is controlled. The product drying time ranges between 25 and 35 minutes, in relation to its size and thickness of material. (E.g. 12 minutes at 205°C

causes the water to evaporate and binds the material, smaller and lighter products take less time.) Mixing with chemicals (e.g. for making water proof, dries longer at lower temperature).

For high surface quality or exact inside dimensions of a tray, products are re-pressed in a hot mould. The high temperature and multiple-ton press result in a smooth surface.

To reach exact outside dimensions, product edges are trimmed. The waste from trimming is recycled for further production.

Thick wall (5-10 mm) using a single mould, resulting in one rough and one smooth surface.

Oven dried.31

Thermoforming fibre applications The first step is the same as with the moulded fibre packaging applications: waste paper is weighed and put into a hydropulper, mixed with warm water while being mashing and pumped through a filtration and mixed with additives according to its purpose.

The second productions step is pumping pulp to the forming section of the line where it is sucked onto aluminium moulds. After residual water has been exhausted, the already finished product is transferred to hot forming moulds.

During the drying process, still wet trays are pressed under high pressure. Temperature of the moulds is automatically controlled, varying between 100 and 220 °C. The product drying time varies between 60 and 150 seconds, in relation to the size and weight of the tray.

For exact outside dimension, product edges are trimmed in relation to the size of a box.

The waste from trimming is recycled for further production.

Both fiber & water are recycled and reused in manufacturing, resulting in almost zero waste. There are no toxic or hazardous waste materials expelled into the environment. 28,29,30

Medium wall, (3-5mm) using a forming mould and a transfer mould. Relatively smooth surfaces on both sides.

Oven dried.32

Thin wall (24mm) using multiple heated moulds. Smooth surfaces and well detailed form.

Dried in mould.

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PLA paper36

Pressing plywood34

Vacuum infusion process (VIP)35

Impregnate paper with PLA (polylactic acid), a biodegradable material made from maize starch or sugar cane. With heat and pressure a 1,8mm thick part could already support the weight of a person. Due to the PLA the fibres are unaffected by humidity and heat.

Veneer layers covered in glue are stacked and heat pressed in between two moulds. These moulds are produced in aluminium covered in stainless steel, which makes them very costeffective even for batch production.

Different layers of fibres are put on top of each other on a negative mould, in the needed combination to get the desired material characteristics. They are sealed and pulled vacuum with a pump. This way resin flows into all the edges of the design, evenly spread, while all the fibrous layers are pushed firmly onto the mould.

As tooling costs for matrices are quite high, it might be useful to see whether the stainless steel-aluminium combination is useful in making moulds for mycelium production.

Would this be useful for larger fibres and a “dry� binder? Is a vacuum bag a good or useful alternative to a press?

Through the network of Aurora and Glimps I had the opportunity to talk to a few experts on composite fibre products.

Sam Whitten - Hemp Eyewear 22nd of February 2019 Sam makes glasses out of hemp. He uses hemp mats (3â‚Ź/piece) from a German company which are bound with a minimum of binder.

The eco-friendly binder used for the mat is made by BASF and binds with heat. He starts from a +-1cm mat (estimate) and presses it with heat. Afterwards he laser cuts the frames and sands them with a tumbler machine. To colour he works with a very fine layer which he presses on top of the hemp. This binds perfectly without adding binders. To finish, he treats the glasses with epoxy to make them stronger and water resistant.

The problem with hemp and flax is that they have a waxy outer layer, which make it harder for traditional glues to penetrate the surface. Instead a more expensive pMDI resin needs to be used. In Europe a few companies make flax and hemp boards and make them into furniture.

Pressed and lasercut frame, finished glasses, resin used for attaching colour layers and for finishing, business card from cut outs, hemp fibre board.

Interviews with experts

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Adam Charlton - The Beacon Biorefining Centre of Excellence - 23th of Februrary 2019 many variables as possible. And then bring

them up, rather than cut them. If you blend you need to see: is it going to change in between batches? A fibre analyser is useful. This is an optical measuring tool allowing you to see the fibre size distribution is in the material.

It would be interesting to test how the mycelium will react with an other biobinder, like PLA or starch. This will also depend on the wettability of the fibres.

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The right way to pre-process the fibres is very important. The quality of the fibres may or may not be ok. If you try to make it with 100% raw materials it is too brittle. It is difficult to break down the fibres to get to a MDF or paper mould process. My advice is to blend with recycled cardboard, as it contains long, thin fibres, like this happens in the pulp moulding process.

variables into the process step by step to understand it best. For instance: check the moisture content before inoculating the fibres, and before and after pressing. Different fibres have different drainage rates. There is a Canadian standard draining test37. It drains fibre through the filter and checks how much water the fibres retain and how quickly.

Treat chips with steam and open the fibres up with a mechanical process. Try to control what you start from. A hammer mill, disc mill and three deck sieve are ways to get there.

With straw you have the surface waxes but you have a fibre structure. The surface wax which makes it hard to make wet and thus it is harder for anything that works with moist to work with/attach to it.

Also important is the mixture of fibres if you want to blend the fibres. If it is mixed you need to know how much variety you will have.

Ideally you want fibres which are well bonded but don’t necessarily retain a lot of water. Try to standardise the process by removing as

It is useful to know the fibre joinage properties. Get as close as possible to a standard with your fibres. The properties could change in between different batches, so standardisation is not easy. You want long, thin fibres. You want to shear the fibre, open

People use a drying tunnel but this has a bigger footprint. And less good surface finish.

Thermoforming with in-mould drying has a lower foot print and a better finish. Choose your technique depending on the look you want for the final product. E.g. do you need a smooth surface to be able to laser print or will you rather work with a sticker? Depending on the thickness up to 150°C is reasonable for heat pressing from his experience.

The danger of drying the fibres down before processing is that they can hornify. It would calcify and collapse the structure of the fibre.

If it dries down too fast it won’t work to pulp it. Better work with wet material. Don’t dry it before pulping. Then pulp mould it. You don’t want to ship wet material 50 miles to mould it. In terms of storage you need to look into the way you will stock it and decide on your process from there.

Pieter Dondeyne – 72P39 and K.U. Leuven 11th of March 2019 Pieter was one of the 10 designers of the Maakbaar project. The aim was to see what designers can learn from nature and sciences and translate this into applications.

Nowadays he makes construction boards with other waste streams. He is innovating by making a resin that is made from natural waste streams, as an alternative to epoxy.

It is washable with water and soap, but not suitable for outside use. His boards have a 50 megapascal elastic strength, which is about twice the strength of MDF. They need an extremely high pressure which can only be obtained by professional presses, like the one at his university (second hand price is about10.000-20.000â‚Ź).

He did tests based upon the mushroom culture waste. He mixed potato starch with natriumhydroxyde (drain cleaner, an alkali) and vinegar acid. This created a bioplastic (instructions can be found online). If you do this, use an air extraction installation.The result of this was something looking a bit like cork. The disadvantage is that you use a food product in the process.

Left page: drying tunnel.40 Right page: 72P board material.

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Jolan Soens – Howest 5th of March 2019 Jolan used to work at Timelab on the Knotplex project, which made construction boards from Japanese knotweed, an invasive weed species. This was started by Lisa Ma, continued by Henri Goeminne and Pieter Dauwe and stopped in September 2017.

Jolan mostly started prototyping with the material.

They followed the MDF process: 1. Grind the fibres in a 3 toothed shredder (as often is used for 3D printing residu) for a few times untill the right fineness has been obtained.

2. Sort the finer and bigger pieces. Fine dust absorbs a lot of glue compared to bigger pieces. You need the fine fibres to fill the holes. Often the core will contain bigger chunks with finer material in between, whereas the surface will contain more fine fibres to obtain a smooth surface structure. The more glue you need (due to the fine dust), the longer the production will take.

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3. Add casein as a binding agent. First mix it homogeneously, then add water according to the apparent moisture. Jolan first mixed the water and casein to get glue.

Other natural binders are potato starch,

corn starch, flour (not a strong binder) or more expensive things like agar agar for food or animal based binders like fish glue or bone glue.

4. Put the mix in a flat mould made of betonplex (10x20cm) with baking paper so the casein doesn’t stick. Later they used a steel plate mould of 0,5 to1cm thick. The price of this was about 500-600€ in production after making it themselves in Fusion 360.

De Roos metaalwerken in Ghent, was the cheapest. They cut it out with a waterjet or plasma cutter. In between they put a silicon sheet of 1-2mm for demoulding. This created a more visual texture on the material.

5. Press with a hand press (like a vice versed jack for a car) to close the mould. Then secure the pressure with wing nuts. First they pressed the board at 500kg/m², later up till 6 ton/ m². Those last boards were much smoother, thinner and stronger. Pressing is important as it brings the fibres closer together causing the binder to attach more fibres allround, creating more strength.

They adjusted the recipe until no more redundant moisture left the mould during the pressing. Less water was better, because a the water leaves the mould, so does the glue.

The final recipe was 1 part of casein with 2 parts of Japanese knotweed and 3 parts of water.

6. Bake in the mould during 1,5h at 150°C. Many people said the casein smells like a rabbit cage, which is unpleasant, so this is something to take into account.

Some tips from Jolan:

• Press as hard as you can, look for the • • • •

limits of your mould. the result of higher pressure is instantly a 100 times better.

If you press in a mould (instead of between 2 plates) the material can’t escape, but the moisture can and will.

Might it be more interesting to lasercut and make a shape and maybe close the seams with epoxy?

Is mycelium still bindable after shredding?

Is it the protein that binds through baking or something else?

Might be interesting to check what gives cardboard and paper their flexibility, which additives are used and whether they are sustainable or not.

Knotplex samples.

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Material tests

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A little background...

I started out my thesis in search of a biodegradable product from mycelium for Aurora. It had to be easy enough to produce for makers in their community with little or no mycelium experience. My first focus was on a biodegradable box for Aurora’s Green grow project. They used these to ship their mushroom meals to their customers. This was a logical step since this was something they could possibly make from their own residu of mycelium. This way they could make and use it within their project and community.

However as the project evolved, I noticed from preparing the research file that we had too many uncertainties still about the mix of the substrate to get the most out of indepth research, so we decided to focus on the acoustic panels as a project. Mycelia agreed to open up the information and learnings from this to the Aurora community so both companies and communities could benefit from it.

The inital focus however got me to set up a series of heat pressing tests. After much of the production research I could tell that many of the processes with sheet materials contained both pressure and heat. So this

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Heat press tests

was the way to move forward in order to get to the right material properties that one can compare with cardboard: thin, light-weight, strong, some water resistance.

Elise Elsacker, one of Glimps’ co-founders, is a mycelium research at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She invited me to come use their heat press. It is a press used for transfer printing vinyl on textile. Glimps soon bought their own heat press too since it is a relatively cheap instrument which can be used for many material experiments, so I was able to conduct further tests in the Glimps lab.

The details of the tests can be found in the attachment, so for this document I will only bring a compact conclusion per variabel I tested with.

Excess moisture dripping into a container, aluminium foil on the press containing a test piece and different saws and knives I used in the first test to see which works best on mycelium blocks.

How to heat press All of the tests were done with simple textile heat presses. They consist of two steel plates - of which the top one is heated - that can be manually clamped onto one another with a lever. The plates are covered with a rubber layer for protecting the pressed fabric. As only one of the plates is heated I had to turn pieces during the process so they got “baked’ on both sides.

Only two parameters can be set: temperature and time. The press will heat up and give a signal when it reaches the wanted temperature. The countdown of the set time starts as soon as the lever is pulled down and applies pressure.

As the press is open at all sides, the excess moisture would come out of the press as soon as you start. As this is not only messy but also dangerous for both electroshocks and burning wounds, I wrapped each experiment in a thick aluminium foil to close off the space around it and left an opening at one side.

There a plastic box could catch the draining hot water. This also allowed me to see how much water actually got out in which phase and with which parameters.

Heat press at V.U.B. lab.

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One of the first things I noticed when I started heat pressing, was the sort of caramel smell, which probably comes from sugars in the mycelium. This also was visible on the surface: the warmer I put the heat press, the more the pieces looked burnt. The top parts - that came in contact with the hot plate first were always darker than the bottom parts.

Later I noticed that the most moist parts always turn the darkest. This you can clearly see in the picture below, where you see a part before and after heat pressing. The yellow bit is a metabolised (old) part of the mycelium, which is usually super moist, almost like a water bubble. This turns very dark after pressing.

A mycelium block I cut into pieces to heat press., 2 pieces pressed 20 minutes at 80°C, 2 pieces pressed for 10 minutes at150°C, top side and bottom side of 3 pieces pressed 20 minutes at 200°C (but turned over halfway).

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Temperatures

I have tried different durations in heat pressing. But due to the limited nature of the methods I used I can’t make any more sense than logic to come to any conclusions.

The only helpful thing I can say, is that when your piece isn’t fully dry after taking it from the heat press, it will curl up in curves, rather than stay flat. Anything under 100°C doesn’t make the water steam away, which comparatively takes a very long time to dry out in the press.

When I started I had no standardization, I did no moisture checks on the pieces. The only thing I did check, was the weight. From this I can tell that the pieces diminished to 1/5th till 1/10th of their original weight after heat pressing, which uncovers the fibre-water ratio.

Furthermore, as for the thicknesses, I can only conlude that it depends on the thickness before pressing, the density of the mycelium and the amount of pressure put on it. With the presses I used I had no precise idea how much pressure I put to it, I could only confirm I got thinner pieces as I pushed the pressure to the limits of the machine. I ended up with pieces of less than1 to 5 mm thick after pressing.

A 5mm thick piece, started from a 35-40mm thickness before pressing; a 1mm piece, started from a 20-25mm thickness.

Time and thickness

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I wondered if turning the pieces around more often would change their look, as they get the heat only bit by bit. I also was curious when most of the decolouration would happen: was this happening mostly at the start or does it happen gradually?

The decolouration seemed to advance gradually. It was also much less decoloured than when I just turned it around once at the same temperature. Where at this temperature (200°C) the top was blackish in other tests, here it was still white and brown.

What I think might be of more importance here, is that each time I opened up the heat press to turn the piece around, a lot of moisture could get out. Since I presumed this had a link with the decolouration, this might be more of a determinating factor.

The pictures on the left are the top side of the piece (which touched the heated plate first in the process), those on the right are the bottom side. of that same piece. The pictures are from 1,5, 3, 4,5 and 6 minutes in to the process. The bottom ones are from after the heat pressing, which was 26 minutes in this case.

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Turnarounds

As for production - and more specifically the structural consistency of a product it might make a big difference whether you use one well grown “solid” piece or rather work with a mat of ripped mycelium fibres, I wanted to test if there would indeed be much difference.

I ripped a mycelium block to pieces (by hand) and randomly put them together to heat press. What I noticed, was that it was dry quicker and that it expanded more to the side under the pressure.

In one test I also mixed a solid piece and loose fibres and although they didn’t feel very different in strength, with further drying out it curved a bit and a clear breaking line appeared.

At first sight they seemed to be as strong as the pressed pieces without an outer layer of mycelium, but my methods weren’t exact enough to conlude anything fundamentally.

Mix of a solid piece and loose fibres with a break line (20 minutes at 150°C) and back and front side of a piece of pressed loose fibres, where you can see the variety of white and wooden pieces alternating (10 minutes at 200°C).

One or more pieces

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When growing mycelium products inside a mould, it is always preferable to leave them to grow a few more days outside the mould.

The generous contact with oxygen creates a white fluffy layer of mycelium all over the surface. This layer is particularly helpful as it gives a lot more extra strength to the piece.

I wanted to test how this plays out with heat pressing, so I grew a few pieces this way. I had the feeling it starts cracking a little later when bending. But I admit my limited and unstandardized methods made it impossible to obtain conclusive results as to which parameter is truly relevant here, so what I can say, is that I do like the look of it, as it definitely adds charm and smoothness to the surface texture.

Pieces before and after pressing. These both had a fluffy layer and I hammered the fibres before inoculation, The left one had much finer fibres, giving it a super smooth finish. Both were pressed 20 minutes at 200°C.

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Fluffy white layer

As fibre properties came back with every expert’s advice, I did a few tests on this as well. I hammered (to simulate a hammer mill) the fibres before and after I grew mycelium on them. I noticed that hammering wet chips of hemp (which were put in boiling water) still was much harder than hammering the same kind of chips which already were partly digested by the mycelium.

In a later test I also noticed that even just stirring the fibres intensly with added hot water after hammering seemed to entangle them more, creating a more entwined structure with the loose bits. The ones with mycelium grown on them after doing this (image on left page) were very solid.

The finer fibers clearly created a much smoother surface finish and it clearly takes more strength to bend before you get cracking noises.

Blending fibres, hammering a mycelium block, a mix of hammered and stirred chips of hemp that had been grown through with mycelium, before heat pressing and after. It was heat pressed at 200°C for 20 minutes.

Blending or not

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I have performed three tests where I added other biobinders. I blended the mycelium filled chips and mixed one with cardboard, one with casein (a protein from cow milk) and one with corn starch used for cooking. The cardboard came from a kitchen roll. I pulped it by stirring it in hot water.

1. 25g hemp + 75 g moist cardboard pulp 2. 40g hemp + 8g caseĂŻne 3. 40g hemp + 8g maizena These tests all lead to amazing results. Not only where the pieces much stronger, but also much smoother as the fine binders filled the holes between the hemp fibres much better.

The cardboard kept the piece much more flexible, with less cracking, whereas the casein and corn starch both made the plates very stiff and super strong.

The only problem with these biobinders, is that they both come from a food source, which is not the direction I want to take.

Stirring the cardboard, heat pressed mix with cardboard, casein and corn, starch.

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Adding binders

Although my methods weren’t standardised enough for deep conclusions, these things I would take into account for future mycelium heat press projects:

• Go for a mix of fibres: thicker, finer fibres, and maybe even nearly powdered bits for an even surface and good density.

• When mixing, a proportional spread of

the fibres is needed for it not to have defects caused by shrinking.

• Look for ways to get the moisture out while pressing, as this will speed up the process.

• 100°C is an abolute minimum temperature

for heat pressing the mycelium if you want a fast and solid result.

• Always demould the piece or get it out of

the press when it is fully dry, as otherwise it will curve up due to shrinkage.

• Mixing with recycled cardboard adds

good qualities if you want to create a super thin but strong piece.

• Push upto the limits of the pressure for

stronger results and even surface quality.

Conclusion

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Connection tests

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I tested ten connection methods: 1. Biological connections • wooden planks grown in the substrate • wooden plugs grown in the substrate • linen tissue grown around the substrate 2. Physical connections • fibre board screws • universal plastic plugs • plastic spiral drywall plugs • metal spiral drywall plugs 3. Chemical connections • Pattex classic PVA wood glue (D2) • Pattex one for all (polymer based) • Tec7 (polymer based) • Doublesided tape in all of these instances hemp chips that weren’t preprocessed (no blending or stirring) formed the substrate.

All physical and chemical connections were tested with (10% of the weight) Turkey Tail as a species. The biological connections had a bit more variety as the wooden plugs were also done with Oysters.

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Overview tests

Method I autoclaved the planks (without adding moisture before) and put them in the mould surrounded by substrate. Only the top where the attachment would be - was free.

Result Originally it stayed quite well attached after drying as the contact surface for growing was quite big. After further drying out at room temperature however the wood shrank more than the fibres and thus shrank itself loose from the whole.

Conclusion For this to work, planks are best put in the middle of the loose fibres so they’re completely surrounded by them. Maybe even with holes or an open structure in the plank so the loose fibres can grow in between to connect themselves with the wood and the planks in a 3D way.

Left page: growing bags.

Right page: Moulded 1 week after inoculation of the substrate, piece after 1 week of growth in mould, piece after demoulding and still moist, and piece after drying where you see the different shrinking degrees cause a disconnection between the wood and the substrate - the wooden plank just fell out.

Wooden planks

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Method Autoclaved plugs without adding extra moisture. Put them into substrate after inoculation.

Result Didn’t connect strong enough with the fibres.

You could easily pull them out.

Conclusion For this to work, I think the plugs should be connected to a plate that in turn is bound by the mycelium in the mould halfway the substrate.

Top: Piece with plugs after growing in the mould for a week, where you clearly see the mycelium created a nice and fluffy layer around the plugs.

Bottom: Piece after drying, where the mycelium shrank away again around the plugs..

Right page: some sketches and notes during the process.

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Wooden plugs

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Method I autoclaved the linen (without adding moisture before) and put it in the mould before adding the substrate. In one test I left the top open, so the linen covered everything but the top. In the other test I completely turned the linen around the substrate so it covered 4 of the 6 sides like a wrap.

Result Doesn’t grow together well with the fibres and the connection is very weak. Gets loose if you tear it even slightly. It did give an elegant finish to the substrate though. Some of the linen got contaminated.

Conclusion Might be a good idea for finish texture, but for it to work, it probably needs to be more in the middle and more interwoven with the substrate.

Left page: Piece with linen on three sides. On the top of the picture you see the mycelium that has grown into the linen on the inside of the mould, whereas on the bottom you see the linen outside the mould is free of mycelium.

Right page: Piece with linen at four sides before drying and dried piece with linen easily coming off.

Linen tissue

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Fibreboard Screws

Universal plugs

Method I drove screws through the back of the panel straight into the dried mycelium tile, without predrilling.

Method I predrilled the dried mycelium tile through the back panel, with the given drill according to the plug size. I pushed the plug in by hand, first through the panel and then into the tile.

I couldn’t get the last 3mm in (although the hole was deep enough), so I hammered them in and drove a screw into the plugs.

Result The tile is attached but it feels like the screws have too much space around them. You can wiggle the panel and can probably easily pull it off the screws by using some force.

Conclusion The thread might need to be wider or the tiles thicker and the screws longer. Or the connection should be strengthened with glue or something filling the spaces between the screw and the fibres.

Result The connection feels strong. It doesn’t wiggle when I try to move it and when I pull, it doesn’t move either. While I put the screw in, I only heard very small cracks of the fibres being pushed out. The mycelium didn’t end up broken, squashed or cracked, but the contact zone with the underlaying surface was visible as the bits sticking out showed some flat and bruised parts. While driving the screw in nothing sounded strange or different.

It went very smooth and nothing sounded off.

Conclusion This is a decent solution. Only the fact that it works with plastic is not ideal, although the HDPE plugs can be recycled.

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Physical connections

Plastic spiral drywall plugs

Metal spiral drywall plugs

Method I predrilled the dried mycelium tile through the back panel. Then I screwed the plugs in by hand with a screwdriver and attached the panel to the plank with the accompanying screw. For both of the spiral plugs screwing the plug in went very well. The thread clearly caught the fibres well without pushing them away. It seemed to gently cut its way through the mycelium. But with the plastic plug the screws only went in halfway. Then the mycelium started lifting from the surface as I tried to get it in further. I think the expansion is too big and it rather pushes away than expands. At one side it also broke through the mycelium and pushed the fibres out.

Method I predrilled the dried mycelium tile through the back panel, with the given drill according to the plug size (diameter 8 in this case). Then I screwed in the plugs with an electric screw driver and I fixed them to the surface with the accompanying screw. With the metal plug it went in just as well and felt very satisfying as it was smooth and it didn’t sound or feel like anything was breaking, snapping or cracking. But at the end of the screwing it also sounded as if something inside wasn’t going too well. The fibres cracked but didn’t get displaced visually.

Result It started cracking very quickly when driving in the screws. Afterwards, with the screws driven in halfway, it wiggled of course.

Conclusion It expands the mycelium too much when driving in the screws. It might be an idea to put in shorter screws, as the connection of the plugs themselves with the mycelium seem very substantial.

Result It connected well and didn’t wiggle.

Conclusion By the sound of it I am not convinced of this being a good solution. The connection did feel solid, with a tiny bit of wiggling though.

Left page: test setup of physical and chemical connections with mycelium hemp boards.

Right page: visual cross section of screws with plug, and in the middle you see the screws not going in further with the plastic spiral drywall plugs.

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Method For the polyvinyl acetate (PVA) wood glue I covered the entire contact zone of the panel by spreading it and then pushed the dried tile into it. For the polymer based glues I just put a few dots (6-8) on the panel and then pushed the tile into it. For the doublesided tape there wasn’t enough flat surface and stickiness to connect the tile. It fell off quite quickly, so it is not interesting.

Result All glues connected well without wiggling. With the PVA glue I do think the possible lack of flatness of the back surface of the tiles might be a problem as it will eliminate quite some connection space, whereas the thicker polymer based glues will connect better with any surface.

Conclusion Glueing created by far the fastest, most efficient and qualitative connection. None of the three tested glues contain substances that are super toxic for the environment and humans. Some claim all should in the long term be biodegradable as they consist of quite simple polymers. However PVA glue has much better ecological standards and is considered harmless, it is not compostable.

Putting it into nature would cause microplastics to get into the natural environment.

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Chemical connections

The biological connections require a few extra steps in production to get them to work.

The added value doesn’t seem worth it as there are decent alternatives.

The polymer glues definitely create the fastest and most efficient connections. The disadvantages however are that on the one hand the biodegradability is debatable and on the other hand you cannot remove the panels without causing harm to them.

Parts of it would probably come off, chips of fibre would be ripped out, or it would break altogether.

So my favorite would be the physical connections, more specifically the universal plug. This connection works well and you can theoretically take off the panels as often as you like and they would still be reuseable.

Conclusion

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Form research

Mood board

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I quite quickly knew from the requirements that it would be a rather flat design for the acoustic panels. First of all there was not much room anyway, and second because of the risk of damage from close passersby. But I also knew I didn’t want just plain white tiles. I wanted some kind of pattern or something characteristic that would clearly distinguish them from other mycelium panels on the market.

I started drawing patterns on paper, but very quickly felt I needed something more flexible.

So I got to using post-its as basic panel form which was ideal since they’re square too. Drawing each post-it twice allowed me to turn them around to get an idea of how the forms would interact. From there I went into drawing them out more precisely in Adobe Illustrator for precision and easily combining into larger patterns.

Then I got some first user feedback and made more patterns. To get an idea of the relief needed to create a visual pattern (through shadow), I made a few simulations in white play clay. Finally I put together simulations in Adobe Photoshop and let the Mycelia employees choose their favorites.

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Approach

Left page: Some sketches on paper.

Right page: post-it try-outs.

Sketches on paper and post-its

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In Illustrator I started by making one tile and then turned it around, matched it with itself in many possible ways to see what would happen.

From this I learnt about what effects where generated by which element: • 1, 2 or 3 connections on the side, • connections at 1/3 or 1/4 of the side, • straight or curved lines, • symmetric or asymmetric shapes • open or closed shapes I drew out about 15 patterns and combinations and asked some customer feedback: “What do you think this pattern would sound like”. To this question I got quite visceral reactions, going from boredom to absolute disgust, happy to peaceful, strict to wild.

It gave me more direction to where I needed to refine the designs to match Mycelia’s culture of friendliness and openness.

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Adobe Illustrator pattern madness

Left page: Nine examples of tiles made in Illustrator, with the grey lines representing a deeper lying part in the panel, creating shadow.

Right page: example of a few different patterns that can be made with just one tile.

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The white clay interested me as it was a very efficient way of creating different models and seeing which kind of shadow effect the line depth would actually create.

It also allowed me to make more realistic simulations in Photoshop with the light coming from the same direction after every turnaround as I could take pictures of the tile on every side.

I made a few tiles with different qualities: thinner and wider lines, deeper and more superficial lines, more and less relief.

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Clay models

Left page: examples of single panel models in clay.

Right page: simulations made with those models in Photoshop, where you see, for instance, in the left bottom corner that a lighter relief doesn’t create much buzz in the design.

Adobe Photoshop simulations

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I selected 8 panels that were significantly different and that I considered an option for making. I put them each on a seperate page with some examples of possible arrangements of the patterns. With those I did a round among some available employees at Mycelia.

I asked each to 1. comment on the panels out loud: say what they felt and which they thought matched their company best; 2. put them in order of preference.

The comments I wrote down and the orders I kept in an Excel file.

The answers diverged quite a bit, except for two panels that more stood out as positive and two that definitely had less fans. From the two most chosen as number one I picked the one that had least countervotes.

More details on this can be found in the feedback file in the attachments.

Left page: the chosen design.

Right page: order in which the questioned employees put the tiles. and a simulation of the winning design. Some found it hard to put all of them in an order, so then I minimally wrote down what they could decide about.

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Feedback round

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Prototypes

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Maybe the most important factor in the prototyping was to get to know the design limits to enable the demoulding.

An easy demoulding step is important for two reasons: for making the plastic mould, as there we need to prevent the plastic from being stuck to the matrix, and for getting the grown mycelium panels out of their moulds in a vulnerable state without harming them.

To get this right, I needed the right chamfers on the sides and in the pattern and the right blend in the pattern and on the corners. This also depends on the material you will make the moulds in: ABS allows for more detail than PET, for example.

So the first thing I did, was visit the company that would thermoform the moulds to discuss which process and material would best suit my project. I wrote some options down, with different prices and possibilities and took with me that at least a R3 (radius of 3mm) blend would be needed and a 3-5° chamfer.

On the drawing we discussed the possibilities for milling the pattern, but clearly any corners or straight lines were not possible.

Drawings I brought to the visit to explain what the goal was and to check the possibilities.

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Design limits

I decided to make 2 matrixes to test the limits. One would have more favorable dimensions: a 6mm deep pattern and a 5° chamfer. The other would have a 8mm deep pattern and a 3°chamfer.

To make the moulds, I started by making the digital 3D models in Siemens NX. Then I glued MDF plates together to get the right depth for the moulds. We created a chamfer by cutting off the sides with an angled table saw.

After this step, we let the CNC router trace the pattern to the desired depth with a rounded milling cutter for an R4 blend. Since it only works on 2 axes, I had to sand the pattern and edges myself to create the top blend and slight chamfer in the pattern. From the hint of the company contact, I varnished the MDF matrix (which not everyone deems necessary). To make it fully thermoform ready, I drilled many 1mm diameter holes in the pattern to let the air go through and help the vacuum pull the plastic into the pattern.

This page: glueing the MDF and cutting the chamfer at the sides.

Next pages: CNC milling, sanding, drilling holes for the vacuum and varnishing the mould.

Making the matrix

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With the MDF matrixes I thermoformed a few moulds. I wanted to test with PET, but I would have needed to wait 2 weeks for its arrival, which was too long at the time. So I went ahead with what I could find: a few sheets of 2mm polystyrene (PS), which was very brittle and stiff, causing every single mould to burst during the cool down shrinking or while demoulding and a sheet of 0,60mm polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which was super flexible and demoulded well.

Using the school’s thermoforming machine, none of the moulds turned out as wanted however: the pattern wasn’t deep enough and the sides of the panels didn’t follow the curves completely. The machine has a bit of a reputation for doing this and I took precautions (by putting the matrix on a little platform as well). But as this can require quite a specialised tooling knowledge, my lack of experience also was at play.

Left page: PS sheet clamped and matrix stuck to table, ready to thermoform. On the bottom right picture you see the pattern is hardly visible in the PS. Drawing showing the way it should have formed (grey line, strictly around the shape), and how it has badly formed in reality (red parts).

Right page: PET mould, with a slightly better result.

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Making the moulds

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At the Mycelia lab we filled the sterilised moulds with a mix of autoclaved substrate, consisting of:

• 1 volume of chopped hemp, • 1 volume of flax, • 1 volume of powder wheat straw.

This results in an excellent mix of longer and shorter fibres and powder to fill the holes for a great density and surface finish. All of these are agricultural waste.

The total volume of our first test was 0,03012m³. Leon mixed everything dry and added 7 liters of water. This is less than needed, but more is added through condensation in the autoclaving process.

After mixing the substrate, it was autoclaved immediately.

The autoclave started at 8.30h and worked for 20 minutes at 121°C. It was cool enough to take out at 12.30h. (It takes a while to depressurize.) We started filling the moulds around 13.45h.

Left page: Flax in big bags, hemp (as sold for horses here) and wheat straw.

Right page: autoclaved substrate, cleaning the mould with alcohol, and filling it.

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Choice of substrate

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For the species we chose to work with Ganoderma. It has less chance of getting yellowish (as Corriolus does more often when metabolised) and is more resitant to (a specific kind of) contamination and it creates a lot of chitin. As we learned from the production research, this is favorable for good material properties.

For the first tests we inoculated the substrate from petri dishes. These had grown mycelium on agar for 1 week. We didn’t know which precise species it was: either lucidum or resinaceum. The petri dishes were completely colonised after 3 days, starting from about a 7x7mm inoculum.

After we filled the moulds to get an idea of the volume, we sterilized a scalpel and cut the agar with the mycelium into tiny pieces.

These we spread out on the substrate and we mixed everything well. After this we closed the moulds with tape to let them grow Left page: sterilizing the scalpel with a gas burner and spreading the cut mycelium from the petri dish on the substrate.

Right page: Leon in the growing container with our moulds on a rack. The moist and temperature are constantly monitored and regulated in this room for optimal mycelium growth.

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Inoculation

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After two weeks we turned the moulds. The purpose of this is to let oxygen get to the top surface of the panels, which now have already taken the shape of the pattern, to let the mycleium grow a white fluffy layer for the looks and the strength.

From turning and demoulding we learned a lot:

• With only 1-2% inoculum it grows way too

• • •

• •

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slow and starts metabolising (getting old and going into a new stadium) before it’s fully grown, so better use 5-10% inoculum.

The front side of the moulds will need more relief, which should be ok with the professionally thermoformed moulds.

We need a clear height mark, as now the moulds were unevenly filled.

Might be good to let it grow on a grill instead of a board in the grow room: when the surface is completely flat it might not have a good gas exchange.

Having a loose fitting on the lid is a risk for contamination but might allow more gas exchange.

Use tape and paper clamps to keep the mould and lid together in final models.

Turning and demoulding

• To have a flat back surface we could

• •

•

use a metal roller a flat board to even out, so maybe a stiff lid to close off the mould is ideal.

0,6mm PET is too flexible. Harder to work with (sterilize) and keep the shape while handling it.

A flexible mould is needed however, and PET has the best results: demoulding the top in a stiff mould is too hard: some pieces stick and it rips the entire piece apart. PET is greasy, which seems to make the fibres stick less.

Make sure there’s not too much moisture in the mould, or it will contaminate.

A last thing I learnt is that the shrinking percentage of the dried product is far less due to the mix than what I’m used to with mycomaterials. Hemp will shrink 10-15% when you dry it after demoulding. Where (from the limited test I could do) here it seems to be only about 3-5% compared to the wet product.

Left page: good growth in mould.

Right page: drawings from the discussion with Leon about what we considered the best approach for the design of the final moulds, good growth in mould with nice fluffy layer, and two contaminated moulds, where you see too much moisture in the first and inconsistent growth and breaking lines between the mycelium and the contaminated parts.

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Final concept

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Substrate mix 1 volume of chopped hemp 1 volume of flax 1 volume of powder wheat straw Species Ganoderma lucidum, inoculate 5-10%.

Mould 2mm PET. 5 degrees demoulding chamfers and 3mm radius blends on both the sides and the pattern. Pattern 6mm deep, 8 mm wide.

10% extra in size for shrinking. the PET allows good gas exchange and sterility, and a good demoulding. Extra cavity for stiff PS lid, which serves also as a fillling reference. It is higher than needed to leave space for the mycelium to get loose from the top after a turnaround, to create the white fluffy layer.

Growth Probably about 7-10 days of growing time, turning around the mould and leaving it to grow for another 3-4 days.

Conditions Humid air and 25°C are ideal.

Final moulds with a much more pronounciated pattern and shape.

(Pictures of the final moulds taken by Leon.)

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Final choices

Main product

Hemp

Waste

Arc Nouveau

Flax

Wheat

Compost

User

Product lifecycle

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}

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Technical drawings

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Cost calculation per acoustic panel If we can use each mould about 100 times and we have 20 moulds, this process is good for 2000 acoustic panels.

Preproduction costs (prototyping and mould making) are 1820,46€. This means 0,91€ per piece.

22,28€

Matrix

PS

50,19€

Clear 2mm PET moulds

38,22€/piece

4,00€

White 2mm PS lids

4,96€/piece

Saw use

5,00€

Tape

0,11€/piece

Glue

5,29€

Hemp

0,89€/kg

Wheat straw

1,14€/kg

4,49€

Flax

0,56€/kg

5,29€

Inoculum

2,70€/kg

Varnish

Inoculum

The costs of usage (tape, growing room, oven and working hours) per piece add up to 12,11€ per piece.

Growing room

Cost calculation

839,33€

PET

Brush

This brings the total cost to 14,70€ per acoustic panel, or about 163,33€/m² for a small series.

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MDF

If it costs 2,59€ per 3kg of substrate, needing 0,81€ of inocolum (at a 10% inoculation rate) and we can make 10 panels with this, the inoculated substrate mix will cost 0,34€ per piece.

If we add all these up we get 13,36€ per piece, but as we may expect some overhead, invisible and unexpected costs I would add another 10%, so 1,34€ per piece to be safe.

Production costs

Protoyping costs

Tape Substrate

Total

15,99€

Growing room

0,5€/piece

5,00€

Oven drying

1,5€/piece

3,00€

Working hours

10€/piece

10,00€

117,53€ Some of these are estimates (e.g. growing room costs, inoculation costs and working hours). Some other prices are based on smaller batch prices, so probably more expensive than the actual cost.

Also the working hours could be less since Mycelia is well organised for large production.

Create your pattern If you make or buy Arc Nouveau panels, you can create any pattern you like for your space by combining them in different ways.

Simply turn them around while you put them together and see which puzzle fits you or your company best.

Place them To place them, you can either make a frame to fit them in and attach them with universal plugs to the back of the frame. Or you can hang them with a polymer based glue directly to the wall.

Compost after use Once you are done using your panels you can simply throw them on your compost.

If you want to speed up the degradation process, you can first grind the panels or break them into smaller pieces. If you use the polymer based glue or th plugs, make sure that you remove all the leftovers from the panels before composting them.

How to use them

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List of demands evaluation Mycelia has decided to wait until the panels are finished to decide whether they will put them up as an artwork in a frame and with the lighting - as described in the “nice to have” demands - or as actual acoustic panels over a larger area in the room. Apart from this, the design meets all the demands.

MUST

• improve the sound quality of the room

•

• •

•

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audibly: cover 35% of the floor surface > Theoretically yes, in practice depending on Mycelia’s choice. be beautiful to look at: stylish, aesthetic > I had only enthusiastic feedback on the looks when showing the simulations to some of the Mycelia employees, so yes. be light weight: max. 5kg/m² > Now we have 2,4kg/m², so yes. be able to withstand a few bumps into it: no sharp edges or small parts sticking out > We haven’t been able to test this yet, but from simular tests we know it should be strong enough. reflect the company’s atmosphere: soft shapes, friendly and open feel > Yes.

Project evaluation

• be easy to produce in-house: max. 50x •

50cm for good sterile conditions > Yes: 33x33cm. reusable moulds for eductional purposes > Yes, the PET allows multiple reuses.

NICE TO HAVE

• incorporate indirect light in the design: LEDs on the back side, aimed backwards

• elegant solution for electric connection:

hidden or matching cable. > Both of these we will look into after Mycelia’s decision on how they will hang the panels.

What most struck me, was the complexity I encountered when doing my production process research. For a seemingly simple product the number of process variables are countless. This tells me that working out a new material is a long process with many steps, but also that much is yet to be discovered, definitely in new fields, like working on and with biologically grown materials.

the market: the price of highly automated processes like in the plastic industry, is hard to beat. The only way to do this is to bring the cost of the entire lifecyle in the picture.

If you would follow a plastic product down the line and after use, the path is much longer, containing more transport, energy, less (social) transparancy and much more negative impact on the planet and society.

As I had some prototyping fails I also learnt that if you want a good result, even in your research phase, good tooling and expertise are important to get reliable results. And that comes with a price of course. There is a limit to what you can solve by being creative with what you have. Speed, high quality and low costs also don’t go together here.

But in our current time these things are not part of the pricetag customers get to see. We don’t see global dependencies, or political factors. We don’t meet the people who make our stuff. I believe bringing production back home and making local materials with local crop by-products is the next step in sustainability.

So when making a new product, it is wise to know how much you can spend on the preproduction phase if you want to be confident your sales will make up for it. This also counts for the working hours put into it, as they are definitely a cost to consider.

The last thing I would like to mention, is the openness to innovate at the top of a company and how important this is for people to feel confident to try things, to be able to fail and learn from it. I had contact with quite a few companies during my time at Glimps and to me it is very clear that to be able to get new answers to old problems, you need the mandate to make mistakes.

Both Mycelia and Aurora work in this atmosphere, and I hope big companies will take their lead.

The working hours also form the largest part of the cost of the Arc Nouveau panels, which I had not thought of at the start. In traditional materials so much has been automated already, and with a new material you really have to re-invent a business.

This also brings us to why it is very hard for new, biologically grown products to enter

What I learnt

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Resources

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Available on March 15th 2019 on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycelium.

Information on chitin comes directly from Aurora Sustainability, who got it from Aberdeen University mycologist Steven Woodward.

For a full and detailed manual, check the Biofab forum, https://biofabforum.org/t/growing-materials-at-home-hard-myceliummaterials-manual/201.

Available on March 15th 2019 on https://criticalconcrete.com/mycelium-cardboard-insulation/.

Pelletier, M.G., Holt, G.A., Wanjuraa, J.D., Bayer, E., McIntyre, G. (2013). An evaluation study of mycelium based acoustic absorbers grown on agricultural by-product substrates, Industrial Crops and Products, 51, p. 480–485. van http://www.elsevier.com/locate/indcrop.

Girometta, C., Picco, A.M., Baiguera, R.M., Dondi, D., Babbini, S., Cartabia,M., Pellegrini , M., and Savino, E. (2019) Physico-Mechanical and Thermodynamic Properties of Mycelium-Based Biocomposites: A Review, MDPI, p.17. van https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/1/281/pdf.

Available on March 15th 2019 on https://johanwijesinghe.com/Mycelium.

Available on March 15th 2019 on https://criticalconcrete.com/mycelium-cardboard-insulation/.

Available on March 20th 2019 on https://materialdistrict.com/material/organoid-moldings/#moved.

Available on March 20th 2019 on https://www.organoids.com/en/products/branches/.

MDF picture: Available on June 4th 2019 on https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/wood/panel-supply/recovering-wood-fiber-usedmdf-new-technology-could-change-game.

Available on March 22nd 2019 on Manufacturing of Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRE1L7anoss.

Available on March 22nd 2019 on http://www.compakboard.eu/products/agri-fibre-board/.

Available on March 22nd 2019 on ECO-Boards production process, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJNQ7J3Wdw. Available on March 22nd 2019 on MDF and HDF, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qitenYvpSx4.

Available on March 20th 2019 on Production of STEICO wood fibre insulation boards - wet manufacturing process, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TIUnaoZTBo. Available on May 15th 2019 on https://www.designboom.com/design/werner-aisslinger-hemp-house-at-dmy-berlin-2011/.

Available on June 5th 2019 on https://www.aisslinger.de/1847-2/.

Available on June 5th 2019 on http://www.wanhuaboard.com/Home/Index/production_principles.html.

Available on May 15th 2019 on https://www.bioizol.eu/en/hemp-insulation-panel.

Available on May 15th 2019 on http://www.naturalfiberboard.com/sale-11101372-customized-size-hemp-fiberboard-waterproof-highfiber-boards-without-glue.html.

Available on June 5th 2019 on https://www.buildwithrise.com/stories/building-with-hempcrete.

Available on May 15th 2019 on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hempcrete.

Available on March 25th 2019 on https://www.granddesignslive.com/whats-on/kevin-mccloud-s-green-heroes/1242-margent-farm.

Available on June 5th 2019 on https://materialdistrict.com/material/banana-fibre-paper/.

Available on June 5th 2019 on http://vikaspedia.in/agriculture/farm-based-enterprises/value-added-products/ecopaper-production-1.

Lefteri, C., (2012). Making it. Manufacturing techniques for product design. Laurence King Publishing Ltd, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, p. 78-79, 86-88, 149-151, 154-157 and174-175.

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32 33 34 35 26 37 38 39 40

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Available on March 20th 2019 on How it’s made moulded pulp containers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA9xBSb9NZI. Images for both processes available on March 20th 2019 on http://www.molded-pulp-fiber.com/products-and-production.

Available on March 24th 2019 on https://www.pulpbiz.com/moulded-fibre-products/.

Available on March 20th 2019 on http://orbit.dtu.dk/files/130393242/Moulded_Pulp_Manufacturing_Overview_and_Prospects_for_ the_Process_Technology.pdf.

Available on March 24th 2019 on https://www.imfa.org/molded-fiber/.

Available on March 24th 2019 on http://www.molded-pulp-fiber.com/products-and-production.

Image available on June 5th 2019 on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molded_plywood.

Image available on June 5th 2019 on https://www.fibreglast.com/product/vacuum-infusion-Guide/Learning_Center.

Image available on June 5th 2019 on http://a1papercups.in/.

Available on March 24th 2019 on https://research.cnr.ncsu.edu/wpsanalytical/documents/T227.PDF. Image available on June 5th 2019 on https://www.fdme.be/nieuws/nieuws-detail/knotplex-van-woekerplaag-tot-bouwplaat/.

Image available on June 5th 2019 on https://www.climatekic.nl/startup/72p/.

Image available on June 5th 2019 on http://beaconwales.org/en/core-activities/.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.“ James Baldwin - novelist and activist

A lot still needs to change before we, humans, will find a sustainable balance with our natural environment the generousity of which we so undeniably depend. Only from a clear vision, consequent action, bald choices, global solidarity and trial and error the results will be able to flourish.

I am very grateful for those, like James Baldwin and Buckminster Fuller (picture), who have come before us and guided the way. They have cleared the path for future generations by expressing bold world views that were hardly considered at their time. They have positively changed our society with their belief in a more equal and humane world.

Nowadays many people fulfill this role in their own modest way: zero waste movements, circular start-ups, sharing economy initiatives, and open source platforms like Glimps’s Biofab forum. I am grateful to all those who help create a community of doers today, who encourage each other to push the boundaries of what we know and what we value, to create a better world for all.

Special thanks

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Attachments

109

The Arc Nouveau is a biodegradable acoustic panel made with mycelium. This means the product is biologicially grown with the help of mushroom spawn. The life of this product is fully circular: it is made with local agricultural waste and it is perfectly compostable after use. The design allows the end users to create their own pattern according to their personal taste or to fit the atmosphere of the room. But however playful the panels are put together for decoration, one thing is certain: the end result will always have style.

The Arc Nouveau is a product of the sustainable future. In this document you can find every step of the research on the production and form of it. Every step of the process is explained.

On top of all this, this file is consciously made open source to stimulate as many people as possible to learn from it and follow their own path in designing with nature in a sustainable way.

I believe sharing this kind of knowledge is the only way we can move forward fast to create a new way of living, thinking, using and producing.