background preloader

Mushroom Materials

Mushroom Materials

The Supermaterial That Could Make Plastic Obsolete Is... Mushrooms? New Plastic ‘Zeoform’ Turns Hemp Into Almost Anything What if todays plastics could be made from materials that were not only sustainable but non toxic? Today, our plastics are made from oil which means not only are we putting toxic chemicals into our atmosphere, but we are also filling our environment with products that cannot bio-degrade. A new company out of Australia has created a promising new product called Zeoform and it is made only from water and cellulose take from hemp plants. As stated on their website: According to Zeoform, their product is very durable and relies only on the natural process of hydrogen bonding that takes place when cellulose fibres are mixed with water. The material is water and fire resistant inherently and can be enforced further in both categories with some small adjustments to ingredients. Given the practicality of the product, the company hopes to expand their patented technology and begin offering manufacturing licensees to larger facilities around the world. Source:

The British Mycological Society :: Outdoor activity 2:What is a mushroom This activity follows on from the mushroom parachute quiz game. Sit in a circle around the parachute. You will need: A mushroom with cap and stalk (if possible), an apple (cut in half), other fruit such as pears. Start the activity by holding up a mushroom with cap and stalk. photograph © ama Ask the children to put their hands up if they think that the mushroom is a plant – ask the children to then put their hands up if they think that the mushroom is an animal – finally ask them to put their hands up if they think that the mushroom is something else. Explain that a mushroom is part of a fungus and fungi have their very own Kingdom. Mushrooms and toadstools are the fruit bodies of a certain group of fungi. The fruit body: The fruit body of the fungus can be likened to an apple or a pear which are the fruits of the apple and pear tree, respectively. The main body of the fungus: Mycelium growing. The parts of a mushroom fruit body:

Building with Mushrooms - Gavin McIntyre, Ecovative Design Gavin McIntyre, Ecovative Design Listen Now Download as mp3 from the show Fascinating Fungi We’ve heard all about how fungi work in their natural environment but one company, Ecovative Design have worked out how to use mushroom roots in packaging, building insulation and even surfboards. Hannah - So Gavin, plastic foam is used all over the world in packaging and so forth, but why do we need to come up with an alternative? Gavin - Well, the protective packaging foam that’s used today which is predominantly made out of expanded polystyrene is a product that has a very short duration in terms of its use. Hannah - And I believe you’ve used mushrooms to help solve this problem with plastic packaging. Gavin - That’s correct because when you look at the ecosystem, mushrooms truly are nature’s recyclers. Hannah - We don’t usually associate fungi with building materials, so what properties do mushrooms have that make them good for using in this kind of thing? Multimedia

BVBA Mycelium Chair by Eric Klarenbeek is 3D-printed with living fungus Dutch Design Week 2013: designer Eric Klarenbeek has 3D-printed a chair using living fungus, which then grows inside the structure to give it strength (+ slideshow) The chair is the result of a collaboration between Klarenbeek and scientists at the University of Wageningen to develop a new way of printing with living organisms. "Our main purpose was to bring together the machine and nature to create a new material that could be used to make any product," Klarenbeek told Dezeen. The result is a new material that, Klarenbeek believes, could be used to make almost anything in future. Presented at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven this weekend, the Mycelium Chair was printed using a mixture of water, powdered straw and mycelium, which is the thread-like part of a fungus that lives underground. The mycelium grew within the structure, replacing the water and creating a solid but extremely lightweight material. "The mushrooms are only a decorative element," said Klarenbeek.

Exhibition: “Mushrooms Paradise” at Mediamatic Amsterdam 1 Flares Twitter 0 Facebook 0 Reddit 0 StumbleUpon 0 LinkedIn 0 inShare0 Google+ 1 1 Flares × When it comes to fungi, most people think about their culinary uses or, in the case of Psilocybin mushrooms, about their hallucinogenic effects. But it seems that this is only the tip of the iceberg, according to an exhibition at Mediamatic, in Amsterdam. Fungi are not only an ingredient in many dishes, but they can be used to build an ecologically sustainable material or be the substrate for a new burial practice. The exhibition, named “Paddestoelen Paradijs” (Mushrooms Paradise), comprises several aspects of the fungi. On the other hand, though, it shows new applications of fungi. Other application of fungi is shown in the installation “Bodies of Change”: it displays how a corpse could be buried under a cloth inoculated with fungal mycelia, so the body nourishes the living organisms as it decomposes.

Mushroom Tiny House: The part-grown portable home - Images Ecovative Design is best known for making sustainable mushroom-based products which can be used as an alternative to Styrofoam, but the company has now turned its hand to making a tiny house on wheels from fungi. At least in part, anyway ... View all The company's enthusiastic claims of "growing a house" may be putting it a little too strongly, as the Mushroom Tiny House requires other materials (mostly wood) to construct, too. That said, the project holds considerable promise for both tiny home enthusiasts and, more generally, larger-scale sustainable building. The mushroom part of the Mushroom Tiny House mostly refers to its insulation, which is based on mycelium (or mushroom root). Ecovative Design is offering its Mushroom Tiny House for sale in kit form. Source: Mushroom Tiny House

The British Mycological Society :: Outdoor activity 3: Making a mycelium Photo © John Latham and reproduced with the permission of King Edward School, Aberdeenshire. This outdoor activity complements the ‘make a mycelium’ indoor activity described in ‘Introduction to fungi' and shown in the picture below. Photo © ama and reproduced with the permission of St Faith's School, Cambridge. The purpose of this activity is to investigate the hidden parts of a fungus and to see how fairy rings might be formed. You will need: A central post to attach the strings to. 12 (or more depending on the number of children) wooden posts with plastic pots nailed onto the top (these are the food source stations)Posts without pots on top to form a circle around the randomly placed posts with pots.A malletTiddlywinks (or Smarties!) When conditions are just right - fungus fruits (mushrooms) emerge from the fine threads of fungal mycelium that lie out of sight beneath the ground. Photo © ama Making a mycelium Look back at the mycelial network and briefly explain about fairy rings.

Return of the Fungi Photo: Andy Isaacson IN THE OLD-GROWTH forests of the Pacific Northwest grows a bulbous, prehistoric-looking mushroom called agarikon. It prefers to colonize century-old Douglas fir trees, growing out of their trunks like an ugly mole on a finger. When I first met Paul Stamets, a mycologist who has spent more than three decades hunting, studying, and tripping on mushrooms, he had found only two of these unusual fungi, each time by accident—or, as he might put it, divine intervention. Stamets believes that unlocking agar­i­kon's secrets may be as important to the future of human health as Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillium mold's antibiotic properties more than 80 years ago. A few months earlier, the University of Illinois-Chicago's Institute for Tuberculosis Research sent Stamets its analysis of a dozen agarikon strains that he'd cultured in his own lab. "When you mention mushrooms people either think magic mushrooms or portobellos.

Good Taste: For the Love of Fungi – The Contemporary Austin Co-presented with Edible Austin—SOLD OUT! This quarterly series connects the art on view with local and sustainable food. Inspired by artist Charles Long’s use of fungi in his exhibition CATALIN, join us for an evening sampling mushrooms and cultured food and drink. Enjoy small bites of mushroom-centric tastings created by Spoon & Co.’s Meg Schwartz, seasonal kombucha from Buddha’s Brew, wine from Bonterra Organic Vineyards, and beer from Austin Beerworks. Guest speaker Jason Cortlund, co-writer and director of the film Now, Forager, will discuss the culture and influence of mushrooms from John Cage to psychoactives to their use as sustainable materials.

3D-Printed Mycelium Chair Sprouts Living Mushrooms! Dutch designer Eric Klarenbeek’s new Mycelium Chair is an amazing mushroom-sprouting seat that fuses organic materials with modern 3D printing technology. Working with the University of Aachen, Klarenbeek developed a way to 3D print with living cells instead of plastic or metal. The sculptural fungus chair is sowed with mushroom spores that flourish over time, creating a new symbol of organic technology. Klarenbeek’s project explores what happens when you combine modern 3D printing technology with the biological building blocks of fungi. In order to create a pliable material, the designer extracted mycelium from fungus and used the thread-like material as a base. The new substance was then printed into a sculptural chair inspired by the natural growth of fungus and organic forms in nature. The Mycelium Chair shows how living material can be used to make structural elements, such as furniture or even houses. + Eric Klarenbeek Via PSFK

Related: