It’s MUSHROOM CHAIR TIME. And you don’t have to be a caterpillar with a hookah to sit on a toadstool. FastCoDesign explains why this furniture is fit for hobbitses and hippies:
Dutch designer Erik Klarenbeek has 3-D printed an incredible sculptural chair from a mixture of straw, water, and mycelium, a threadlike network of fungus that lives underground.
Sjoerd SijsmaErik Klarenbeek.
It sounds like Klarenbeek (a cute Amelie-ish sort of chap) 3D-printed chair components out of the compostable goop, and then mycelium went to town growing all over them. Klarenbeek then fused the chair parts together and covered them in bioplastic to seal everything up. The result, which is now on display at Dutch Design Week, was nothing less than PURE MAGIC:
Klarenbeek and his team connected with the Mushroom Research Group of Plant Breeding at the university, and were immediately bewitched by the plant’s power. “The longer we work with it, the more fascinated and inspired we are by the potential of mycelium,” says Klarenbeek.
DUH, says anyone who’s ever been to Burning Man.
