What is myco-technology? A view from the MycoWorks studio

Mushroom cultivation is strange to most people; myco-technology, even stranger.

“It’s like tending to skin in a way,” says Nick. “It feels like a combination between surgery and cooking.” He pauses and then asks the others, “If it was a combination of things, what would it be?”

“Cooking,” says Ita. “Engineering, obviously.”

“Sculpting.” adds Caitlin.

“It’s also like working in a plant nursery,” says Hannah.

Caitlin agrees. “Yeah, gardening.”

“Imagine walking into a greenhouse, but it’s also a hospital,” says Nick, laughing.

In short, it’s all of these things and something else completely.

All of this is happening in a studio on top of a tremendous, typical San Fransisco hill, overlooking the fog in the Bay, the bridge to Oakland veering out towards the horizon.

It’s the same studio where Phil Ross, the co-founder and CTO of MycoWorks, has been creating mycotecture sculptures, furniture, and building material for the last two decades. Every time I’m here, I have to stop and exclaim next to the window — there’s only one in the basement unit — with this view from the Castro down to the Mission District and out to the water, so modestly stunning amidst the jumbled workaday surroundings. When I returned in early July, there was giant whiteboard full of to-do lists sitting under the window. Next to it, one of Phil’s mycelium-and-wood stools, an Internet modem sitting on top, its antennas angling above it, looking like an alien of mixed organic-robotic heritage.

I came to talk with the studio team about their experiences making myco-materials. I was curious to get their view on the process of bringing these new materials into being. I found that they’re just as beguiled as I am by the strange novelty of this work.

“So, what do you think is possible with this material?” I asked them.

“So much more,” says Caitlin. “With really good lab-quality controls, there are so many more possibilities. The potential is vast in a lot of ways.”

Nick adds: “And even with the basic controls that we’re able to manage right now, the mushroom has been surprising lenient. The mushroom is so — ”

“ — resilient,” says Hannah.

“ — resilient, yeah. And, the fact that really, the first time we tried this, it came out great, and it’s just been getting better since, it feels like there’s a lot possibilities.”

Ita chimes in. “Yeah, that we’ve been able to do so much with so little.” (Hannah: “And just a few months too.”) “Yeah — it shows how awesome the material is. … And this is just with one species. And there’s countless numbers of species are out there.”

“Yeah, it can be both exciting and overwhelming,” says Nick. Everyone laughs and nods at this sentiment. “Everything effects everything else. We want to test how much air space it needs, but then we have to have the exact same conditions, with the exact same substrate, and the exact same temperature… all of that.”

Ita: “And it responds. These things matter.”

They all nod in agreement.

The team comes from a range of backgrounds, meeting at the intersection of design and engineering. Caitlin, the studio manager, has been with MycoWorks the longest, since 2012. She was studying architecture at the University of San Francisco when she took a class with Phil during her last semester. She joined him soon after as a studio assistant and has been developing designs and materials with him ever since.

Ita (short for Itamar) came to MycoWorks from NYU with a degree in art and a passion for sustainable materials. He works part-time at the OtherLab, a San Francisco-based experimental lab focused on prototyping for sustainable and biomedical technologies.

Hannah just finished her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley were she was mentored by Professor Tom Bruns, a specialist in fungal ecology, and by Sonia Travaglini, the PhD student in Mechanical Engineering department who tests MycoWorks materials. Hannah was an intern with MycoWorks in her senior year, working on making floatable myco-materials as her senior thesis. She joined the team after graduation.

Nick has a BS in Environmental Science and an MS in Mechanical Engineering, both from Stanford University. In between, he took two years off to study traditional handicrafts — blacksmithing, leather tanning, shoemaking, woodworking, among others — and to travel to Central and South America.

They’ve all gathered around the simple table in the center of the studio, snacking on rice crackers and reflecting on their work. They complete each other’s sentences, their thoughts intertwining after many hours in the studio working with each other and their lively material.

“So, how do you guys see this practice scaling up?” I ask. This is something I’ve been curious about as I’ve gotten to know the MycoWorks process.

Caitlin answers first. She’s obviously given it a lot of thought.

“We’ve talked about it a lot in the past few months because that’s going to be a key factor to how MycoWorks grows. And, it’s interesting, we’ve actually scaled up — ”

“We started out with these little strips,” says Nick.

“Yeah, and then we scaled up to 18”x24” sheets, slowly, and 21”x26”, and now we’re doing a 4’x6’ sheet in there,” she says. But scaling up is not a one-to-one process. It presents its own challenges, she explained. “We’re doing a lot of our initial research because we have to optimize our growing conditions. That will be really important.”

In the practical questions of day-to-day production, all of them are aware that they’re not just developing new materials — they’re developing a whole new field, feeling their way into an evolving vocabulary, set of tools, images and ideas that best explain and propel the process.

Nick, looking pensive, has some last thoughts.

“We’re really in between fields, in this totally new area — that’s the fundamental feature for me — I’m always thinking about, ‘Well, no one does this, so how am I going to do it?’ We’re constantly reaching out into all these other fields and synthesizing. And that’s really interesting. Soon there will be tools for this, but it’s just starting right now. So it’s really wide-ranging, pulling from other places, and it’s really exciting to be a part of that.”