climate

futures


On view at the Liberty Research Annex
October 17, 2024 - January 1, 2025


about
projects
  1. 22/26 Midwest
  2. Ambiguous Territory
  3. Annotation and Insulation
  4. Asutsuare Rebound
  5. Atlas of the Trans-Apocalypse
  6. Becoming Biomass
  7. Bespoke Ultra-Thin Layered 3D-printed Reusable Wood-Bio-Based Formwork for Casting Complex Concrete Geometries
  8. Branch Wall: Geometrically Informed Non-Planar Toolpath and Material Deposition
  9. Deploy 2.0
  10. Detroit Cultural Center
  11. Elephant in the Room, and Other Fables
  12. Fabric-Formed Unstabilized Poured Earth
  13. Frie(s/d)
  14. Functionally Graded Additive Manufacturing
  15. Guidance for Designing and Implementing Constitutionally Valid Local Plans and Regulations to Protect Landmarked Trees, Woodlands, and Tree Canopy in Michigan
  16. Heat and Housing: Co-producing Passive Cooling Strategies and Promoting Health in Informal and Precarious Settlements
  17. Hygroscopic Envelope: Building Enclosures for Climate Adaptation
  18. In My Backyard
  19. In-Svalbard: Cold Coast Atlas
  20. Land, Foodways, and Kinship: The Case of Palestinian Villages
  21. Light Forms
  22. MiCE Architecture: Design Strategies to Mitigate Michigan Coastal Erosion
  23. Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit
  24. Myco-Composite Furniture
  25. Post Rock Post-Industrial Plastic Facade
  26. re:FE Reimagining Mining Waste from a Wounded Region
  27. Shell Wall: Coupling Non-Planar Robotic 3D Concrete Printing and Topology Optimization
  28. Solar Technology Integration on Building Facades
  29. The Canopy
  30. The Lifespan Project
  31. Unfolding Forms of Conveyance
  32. Urban Climate Law Series
  33. Vertical Wetlands





Myco-Composite Furniture
Glenn Wilcox         2022-2024

24

Since 2021 I’ve been working with a material called Mycelium Based Composite (MBC), essentially the growing body of fungi without the fruiting mushroom. The mycelium will grow on a surprising number of things. I’m experimenting with different mixtures including; hemp, shop waste, and other ingredients like used coffee. After growing in a mold for several weeks the material is dried and maintains the consistency and structural capacity of Styrofoam (EPS) and bonds surprisingly well to a number of things like wood, cardboard, and fabrics – particularly natural materials, but plastics too.

In all of my designs utilizing MBC I’m creating a structurally interdependent and composite system. In each design the mycelium substrate grows around and bonds to a core composed of some combination of wood and cardboard, materials the mycelium bonds to exceptionally well. Inner cores and outer mold skins are drilled with ventilation holes to allow for the exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen – essential to mycelial growth. One should think of the MBC as more of an upholstery than a wood. Through growth and drying the unification of cores and the MBC skin create a composite structure that is exceptionally strong and light and ultimately compostable.