“The concept behind our mushroom chaise is, what if we could grow our furniture instead of chopping down trees to manufacture furniture?” Terreform ONE Executive Director Vivian Kuan, told us. “So we’re offering an innovative alternative to current sofas out there that actually contributes to the environment instead of hurting the environment. At the end of the product life cycle, this could just be thrown into the backyard or out in nature and it would just decompose and biodegrade naturally.”
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The Mushroom Chaise will be on display at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair alongside Jason Krugman’s mechanized morphing LED sculptures through May 17 at the Javits Center.
To make the chaise, Terreform first constructed a masonite frame and then infused it with mycelium spores with the help of Ecovative, a New York-based company that specializes in packaging and structures made out of mushroom material. It took just seven days to fill the pre-constructed form with strains of fungi in a lab setting. Kuan says that Terreform’s next step is to achieve a chaise that is made completely out of mushrooms.
+ Terreform ONE
Photos: Yuka Yoneda for Inhabitat
