The London Design Festival usually offers a glimpse at innovative products from talented designers, but the Mycelium + Timber project is in a league of its own. Designer and furniture maker Sebastian Cox collaborated with researcher and designer Ninela Ivanova to bring the range to life. Using mushroom mycelium and discarded willow wood, the duo created eco furniture for unconventional living spaces. To create the stools and pendant lights, the designers made individual molds from thin strips of wood, and filled them with a particular type of fungus.
The organic designs boast unique textures and colors, giving an inkling to the technique’s potential as well as hinting to possible future applications. As far as eco furniture goes, Mycelium + Timber truly takes things up a level or two. Apart from the obvious blend of contemporary design and innovation, the project also highlights the ancient relationship between wood and fungus. The two materials co-exist in complete harmony, in a similar way to a wild woodland landscape, but here they find a new purpose. Presented at the Somerset House as part of the Design Frontiers exhibition, this ingenious project is only beginning. Cox and Ivanova plan to design a complete furniture collection soon. Photographs© Petr Krejci.
