I stumbled upon this design today. This chair is a solid piece of mycelium that has been grown into the wooden legs. The seat rested on the mold with the outside edge completely exposed. This is the best image I could include since the images on the main post are protected, but you can find more here.
If I do end up making a mycelium and bamboo chair, a design similar to this seems like a possibility. This particular chair is just mid-century inspired, but the shapes of the wood component should be fairly simple to CNC mill, and I could grow two squares of mycelium instead of the cushions, which would only require a simple mold.
Other views of this exact chair can be found here.
While beginning the design process for my chair, I started looking at mid-century modern furniture, since that is when plastics and mass-produced furniture really started. I want to recreate a design using the mycelium and bamboo, so I was looking for something simple and small enough to fit in the kilns at school.
Charles and Ray Eames were really big in mid-century furniture. They designed many of the pieces we still associate with the design style today, and Herman Miller still produces many of their popular designs. One of their most iconic designs is the fiberglass armchair, which was also available as a side chair without the arms. The formed fiberglass seat was dangerous to produce, so it was switched to plastic, only to be brought back by Herman Miller after they found a safer manufacturing method. The chairs can still be purchased from Herman Miller, and are available with upholstery, as well as different base options.
You can take a look at some more photos of the chairs on Herman Miller’s website here.
