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Section title
MycoFabric
by Maria Magos
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MycoFabric
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CSA Research Report
Project Details Project Lead:
Maria Magos
Design Participants:
Lucy Jones Owain Caruana-Davies
Title:
MycoFabric
Type:
Public interior design installation
Location:
UCA Canterbury
Project Dates:
31 July - 17 August 2018 Show build 24 August - 31 August 2018 MA Show open to public
Design Period:
31 May 2018 - 31 August 2018
Budget:
£350
Scale:
4m x 1.7m x 4m
Support:
UCA
MycoFabric
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Fig.01 Mushroom farm business
Section title
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MycoFabric
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Research Statement
Research Agenda and Process Overview
Significance and Contribution
Mycelium /mʌɪˈsiːlɪəm/ noun: the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a network of fine white filaments (hyphae).
McCoy positioned a statement: ‘‘Two facts became quickly apparent for anyone studying mycology: 1) fungi are incredibly important and fascinating and 2) nobody knows about number 1’’ (McCoy, 2016:17).
Architects and designers are exploring different avenues regarding mycelium and its capability as a new and experimental bio-material. Noble researchers including Paul Stamets have pushed the idea of mycelium as innovation and have welcomed new members to the discussion on the utilization of mycelium in an assortment of industries. The normally invisibile materiality behind this whole procedure is a simple organism of fungus called mycelium that grows right under our very feet. This project is based on one exceptional sort of organism: mushroom mycelium. Mycelium is potentially usable as a biomaterial, a material that can possibly offer resources in urban areas and economies and a material that is living and self-repairing. This project utilizes mycelium by designing using its tactile materiality that invites curiosity by allowing people to see and touch mycelium, not only as a finished object but also as a visible process of growth and deterioration.
Research Questions 1.
Respecting mycelium as a biological partner in the design process, how can the identification and testing of specific challenges related to use of biological materials be integrated in the growing design movement towards sustainability?
2. What effect will the unusual/non-laboratory conditions have on the growth of mycelium? How can the outcome be assured? 3. How can the growth of mycelium be shaped by formwork? 4. How can the process of breakdown and organic decay become part of the narrative of the project?
The significance of sustainability is central to the impact of design. Every design should be invested in sustainability. It should be embedded in every practice. As Paul Smyth explains at the Radical Matter talk at Design Museum London on 8th March 2018: ‘‘Something about environmental issues is that they happen in big volumes- they happen by lots of irresponsible acts not by small objects consumed occasionally so we need to kind of celebrate that scientific side of material sustainable option is actually, it’s not the one found in Dezeen or out there, it requires a lot of analysis and thought’’(Smyth,2018). The investigation and human utilization of fungi had its starting points in ancient socities. The investigation of fungi as a branch of science had only happened 250 years ago. Information of fungi and mycelium to a great extent showed up only in indentification guides to scientific papers. Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) was one of the first people to meticulously describe and organize mushrooms. He is the founder of the present taxonomic naming system for the classification of living objects. To him, he describes: ‘’the habits of fungi were so similar to that of animals that he considered them a small “animalcule” similar to worms, but in its own genus: the Chaos fungorum’’ (McCoy, 2016:25). Elias Fries (1794-1878) added over 100 genera to the group making his further classification imperative to modern mycological taxonomy, thus one of key founders to the taxonomy. Methodologies 1.
Devise an appropriate formwork in the most effective way to maximize the potential of the material and to gain insight into how mycelium can be grown in-situ into different shapes. Using as simple, readily available formwork as possible.
2. Regular/Daily monitor and record the effect of changing conditions, from non-laboratory/real-world conditions on the performance growth/success of the mycelium. 3. Evaluate and identify specific challenges related to the growth of mycelium as a basis for future research and design iteration.
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Design Proposal This project features an interior space covered in stretched transparent, nylon-based blend of synthetic fibers suspended from a ceiling with scaffolding to create a pendulous sculpture carrying mycelium to express the softness of mycelium and creating a juxtaposition of the seen (visibility) and unseen (mass of branching, thread-like hyphae that grows under our very feet). The resulting is a habitat meant to be experienced and raise curiosity of mushroom mycelium. The growing process of mycelium itself is quite simple and easily achievable in a home lab setting. Given that this project focus is more on mycelium application rather than investigating the cultivation of raw material, the specific mycelium used in this project is classified as pearl oyster mushroom. The growing process itself is described in the
Appendix. Some of the mycelium is also sourced from GrowCyclea project launched by Fungi Futures CIC an innovative social enterprise based in Devon, UK. The speed at which mycelium degrades over time is directly related to how it is treated. When mycelium is left to dry, mycelium forms become rigid and durable, at this point it is still alive but not fruiting any mushrooms. The indoor structure piece will inevitably degrade sooner. Carol Collet talks about the moment where the creator may ‘’lose control’’ of the mycelium and allow it to behave as it intends. My project aims to highlight the process after the mycelium has already grown, taking an element of control out of the project will help achieve this – by not including an irrigation system or the idea of a false environment for the material.
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Proposal & Context
Design Research Context Field of Work
Work by others
Visionary scientists including Paul Stamets have pushed the concept of mycelium as technology and have invited new participants to the conversation on the application of fungi in a variety of industries. This conversation now includes a growing movement of designers who are experimenting with mycelium and its potential to become a commercialized building material.
A specific project to look into is suede-like furniture by Sebastian Cox who has become the latest designer to work with mushroom mycelium – the British furniture maker has teamed up with researcher Ninela Ivanova to investigate the material’s potential in commercial furniture design. Cox and Ivanova wanted to use the fungal material to create more everyday products. Their project, called Mycelium + Timber, features a series of simple stools and lights with a suede-like texture, designed to suit any domestic interior.
Key technological outcomes of proposal 1.
Provide space for human occupation.
2. Record, document and exhibit the process of deterioration and decay of the mycelium using photos, film, and photo manipulation. 3. Grown off-site and assembled on site with the help of scaffold and tensile wires. 4. Creating the tensile fabric structure by improvising on site additionally imitating the form made in 3D software.
Fig.02 Furniture design by Sebastian Cox and Ninela Ivanova, 2017
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MycoFabric
Proposal & Context
Design Research Context Work by others “What really excites us both is how you take this material out of the conceptual phase and put it into people’s homes,” Ivanova told Dezeen. The discarded goat willow was sliced up to create thin strips, which were woven together to create individual moulds. Within these moulds, the designers added a type of fungus called fomes fomentarius, which was cultivated using more wooden strips as food. “It’s not just about the fungus, it’s about the marriage of the two materials,” said Ivanova. “It’s not sustainability for us – it’s just what makes sense. These two materials have a natural relationship in the woodland, so let’s see how we can exploit that.”
In a lecture I attended on the 13th of March 2018 for the launch of the book Radical Matter in London Design Museum Carole Collet said, ‘’For a textile designer, this is fairly spooky because I don’t do floral designs. This is what I like about designers engaging with this sort of new living materiality is that actually when you lose control and when your natural collaborator takes over and actually starts to redefine something. Of course, I killed mycelium, so I killed my co-worker. When you work with biology you don’t work with a piece of plastic you can’t transform it, you actually work with a living system that opens up the evolution of how do you develop stuff or nurture strategies to actually grow materials but also knowing that you do collaborate and totally explore the organism but then you kill it’’ (Collet,2018).
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Section title
Design Methodologies The project stages a playful interaction for adults and children fuelled the imagination as to what this could be and how it can be staged. This is done by showing and utilizing mycelium as an alternative to temporary structures. The design involves the material characteristics by showing the relationship in experiencing tactility both as structure and material nature. The nylon-synthetic which makes the structure carries mycelium to express the correlation of softness and delicacy of care for both the synthetic fibers and mycelium.
variable for consideration, as the disadvantage to this project is the time involved in growing mycelium (2 weeks). 3D modelling and looking for readily available material to be used as the structure was necessary with the amount of mycelium made at the home-lab setting during the duration of the design process. Drawing a 3D model of the site allowed me to consider the space arrangement for nylon and mycelium needed as well as the walking route.
Despite the number of variables at play, the design process resulted in a form that responded The size of the structure, site, to the design propositions that material type, time, weight, and held practical meaning. cost quickly became entangled variables in the planning. The intensity of the labor necessary to grow and pack the mycelium material into the desired shape became an additional
Critical Design Elements 1.
The design of a playful interaction environment.
2. The application of nylon and grow in place mycelium. 3. The performance of taking mycelium out of control from false environment. Fig.03 Mycelium lace, Collet, 2016
Carole
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Process & Methods
Prototyping and testing In order to develop the installation, a series of tests are carried out with both the base structure material (nylon) and nylon carrying mycelium, which include both space arrangements, assembly and tensile tests. The test you see on this page is an illustration on the importance of fresh, healthy mycelium. When growing anything from living material, it is important to remember that it is in fact alive and needs to be taken care of accordingly. This is perhaps the most interesting factor to keep in mind when approaching a project based in biomaterials. If the proper habitat and food source is not maintained, your living material will cease to be living.
variety for any home cultivator to develop. There are several recipes in magazines, books, articles on the Internet as well as mushroom farms and workshops on how to grow mushrooms. Here, I’m using two simple ingredients: coffee grounds and mushroom spawns. The instructions I found were taken from an article online published in 2012 by Adam Sayner based in UK. Please refer to the appendix for more information on this. b. Hanging and Distribution Installing the outline of installation, improvising the tensile fabric in situ. Hanging test with grommets and tensile wires.
Fabrication Techniques a. Rit DyeMore Synthetic dye
c. Installation of 6 mm grommets f. Tube support onto fabric Two options were considered for Two grommets placed on each support of the tube and mesh due side per fabric element to drape to the height difference of the with the help of tensile wires. beams on site.
c. In-situ test
Record of any changes of I decided to observe and mycelium in new environment. investigate by growing my own pearl oyster mushrooms as it Fig.04 is known to be the simplest
Cultivation observation
Cultivation
Direct observation
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Fig.05 Mushroom harvest with 3 weeks (left) 4.
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1. Mycelium growth in coffee waste and oyster spawn.
2. Germinating spores sprayed with water twice daily. 5. Caps begin to turn upwards, harvest within 3 weeks.
3. Spores double in size everyday. 6. Mycelium hardened.
4. Spawn mixture should now look completely white.
d. Element testing
Using the stovetop method to dye Testing the strength of grommets the fabric as nylon contains more and weight of mycelium that is than 35% synthetic fabric. Please being carried by the fabric. refer to appendix for instruction. e. Fixings and bracings b. Janome J3-20 Sewing Machine Building a scaffolding for the Use of sewing machine to seam pendulous structure and consider nylon fabric using topstitch seam the fixings and bracings used to method that helps stay in place support on the beam, support for and giving a crisp edge finish. steel mesh and structure.
a. Growing mycelium
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Process & Methods
Mycelium hardened and decayed in 5+ weeks
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MycoFabric
Process & Methods
Fig.07 Floor Plan (above) Fig. 08 Perspective (below)
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Process & Methods
Fig.07 Floor Plan (above) Fig. 08 Perspective (below)
MycoFabric
Process & Methods
Fig.09 Proposal scaffolding fittings
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Process & Methods
Control Systems The design of a custom tube support was required as there are 2 beams at the exhibition space which are of varying heights to each other. The flange is not flush with the wall which means a wall plate would have to be considered for that side of the space. The use of electronic measuring tape allowed to assure the steal beam would be placed perpendicular to the wall. Due to the height of
Fig.10 Drawings showing construction details of custom tube support for scaffolding
the beams and length of the steel pipes, two people were needed in order to place the steel pipe onto the beam support. Attach the cable tie from the mesh to the steel pipe every 300 mm to assure it wouldn’t bend making it safer. The tensile wires are hooked onto the mesh and hung from the mesh allowing the fabric element to be draped from the scaffolding.
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Section title
Occupation and Interaction The playful installation is in front were a little wary at first asking if of the Kirk Lecture Theatre at the mushroom mycelium were University of the Creative Arts safe to touch. in Canterbury that allowed visitors to the exhibition that can walk through, touch and smell developing a shared spatial and social experience. The mycelium mushrooms were a surprise to the visitors of the installation. Visitors
Fig.11 Photo manipulation showing mushroom settled in fabric
Fig.12 Render in site
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Review of Outcomes
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Section title
Dissemination and Future Work Mycelium demonstrates that we can start to move our building, development, establishment, installation industries in addition to capitalize the development toward resilient, locally-sourced, sustainable materials. Would you be able to envision a world in which any constructible material required could be sourced from a nearby mushroom farm developed at your post-modern neighbourhood? As our comprehension of mycelium develops, the way to understanding its maximum capacity lies in our aggregate creative ability and to our responsibility regarding sharing the successes and difficulties of joining forces with fungi.
Fig.13 Mushroom trunk
on
tree
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MycoFabric
Appendix
Section title
Appendix Growing mycelium Widely recognized materials to cultivate Oysters are normally naturally cut hardwood logs or shredded straw. Flourishing mushrooms on logs can be finicky and will take up to a year for the first crop. Cultivating on straw expects you to sanitize the straw to begin with, to dispatch off resident organisms that will rival with mycelium, which is why coffee waste from coffee grounds is a substrate that is purified by the espresso preparing process, hence cutting down the entire pasteurizing process in advance and get straight into the inoculating. Additionally, coffee beans are a tremendous waste resource and are loaded with supplements which Oyster Mushrooms love to develop on. To start the inoculation process, I ordered 250 g oyster mushroom spawn from Amazon and collected fresh coffee waste from my espresso machine at home. Using clean gloves, I mixed the spawn and fresh (this is vital) coffee waste into a clean mixing bowl disseminating it uniformly all through the coffee. I transferred the mixture into freezer bags for cultivation and ensured I have cut 4x5mm air holes in the sides and kept in a dark place in my kitchen. The air holes are required as the mixture needed to be sprayed with water twice daily. Within the following three weeks, I noticed the spawn develop over the espresso beans and turned the mixture white when it has completely colonized the mixture. Mushrooms love moist, damp conditions, and they will decline to develop if it’s excessively dry. After 3 weeks, you will see the homegrown mushrooms bloom and the bag is white of mycelium able for reproduction. The mushrooms are then ready to be harvested and eaten. I was more inquisitive with the texture and appearance of the white mycelium in the bag, as a result, I decided to go against its acceptable environment condition after the first crop and left the bag by the window sill where cold air would waft the bag with the notion that will stop the growing process and to dehydrate it. Upon doing this, I noticed the texture became completely white and solid and no more mushrooms sprung up. I took out a portion of it and noticed while playing with it the texture, like modelling clay, can be shaped and possibly moulded in a cast or formwork. It turned out to be strong and lightweight. For a different approach, I thought of fruiting a minuscule section of one of the oyster mushrooms in a dish of agar media. It grew in the nutrient agar until it reached its decay phase and turned into moss. For production scale in mushroom farms, mycelium tube is arrangement ideal for use in large scale production. It reduces the utilization of spore encourages the development and collecting of mushroom. Contrasted with mycelium block, mycelium tube contains more supplement and water. Mycelium tube is commonly 2 meters high. The radius can between 10 cm to 30 cm. Mycelium will effortlessly dry out if the diameter is under 10 cm and will be overheated and absence of oxygen when it surpasses 30 cm (Stamets,1993). Rit DyeMore Synthethic Fiber Dye 1. To determine how much dye is needed, weigh the item to be dyed on a food scale or estimate the weight. As a general guideline, one bottle will dye up to two pounds of dry fabric. If dyeing you are trying to achieve a very bolder color, double the dye ratio. 2. Before dyeing, remove any visibile stains on the garment. This will help achieve uniform color results when dyeing. Pre-wash item in warm, soapy water. This helps to remove any finishes that may interfere with dye absorption. 3. Wear rubber gloves to protect hands from getting stained and to insulate them when working with hot water. 4. Fill a stainless steel pot with enough water for the fabric to move freely. Cover pot and heat water on stove top to just below boiling (200 F° or greater). 5. When water begins to simmer, add dye and mix well. 6. Wet the item you are going to be dyeing and add it to the dyebath. 7. Keep temperature at a low simmer for the duration of your dyeing. 8. Stir slowly and continuously. The first 10 minutes are the most critical. Stirring helps to ensure an even color with no splotches. 9. Item can remain in dyebath from 10 minutes up to one hour. If dyeing polyester or a polyester cotton blend, keep the fabric in the dyebath for at least 30 minutes to ensure that the color takes fully. Nylon tends to dye very quickly and much darker than other fibers so the actual time needed in the dyebath is less. 10. When desired color is achieved, remove from dye bath. Fabric will look darker when wet and will dry lighter. Squeeze out excess dye.
Materials and Suppliers List Steel pipes 42 mm Canterbury Steel Mr. Marcus Unit 3, Wealden Forest Park, Herne Common, Herne Bay CT6 7LQ Steel mesh Canterbury Sheet Metal LTD Mr. Tony Unit 6, Goose Farm, Shalloak Road, Kent CT2 0QE Tube Clamp Wall Flange 3 mm 42.4mm O/D ParkerTools Vauxhall Road, Canterbury CT1 1HD Grommet Kit with 100 Set Grommets, 1/4 Inch Amazon UK, Sold by PANGDA UK 5PK Sheen Tights Primark Topstitch Thread 30 M Closs & Hamblin 20-21 St Margarets Street, Kent CT1 2TH Veiled Oyster Mushroom (Pleurotus dryinus) Mycelium Spawn Dried Seeds (10g) Amazon UK, Sold by RWS J3-20 Sewing Machine Supplied by UCA Canterbury Rit Dye More Synthetic 7oz-Daffodil Yellow Amazon UK, Sold by Rit Dye Bleach, Stainless steel saucepan, latex gloves Asda
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Appendix
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Section title
Credits Bibliography
MA Interior Design Course Leader: Sam McElhinney
Franklin, K. (2018) Radical Matter : Rethinking Materials for a Sustainable Future. (s.l.): Thames & Hudson.
MA Sessional Lecturer Design: Owain Caruana-Davies
Stamets, P. (2005) Mycelium running: how mushrooms can help save the world. (First) Ten Speed Press. At: http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ book/index.php?md5=482B4CB0BF8A31197B315E0C5A5045CC (Accessed on 7 January 2018)
Image Credits All figures are copyright the author unless noted as follows: Figure 01: copyright Shutterstock Figure 02: copyright Dezeen Figure 03: copyright UAL Research Online Figure 13: copyright Shutterstock Figure 14: copyright Shutterstock
Visiting Critics 2017/18: Luke Jones John Joe Brophy Dr. Kim Trogal Dr. Anna Holder Steve Dixon Smith Ian Badger
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Fig.14 Mycelium
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