Is fungus the future of furniture across Asia?
Mycelium is revolutionising sustainable design and shaping the future of eco-friendly homeware, from lamps to sofas
“There was a sense of disbelief that mushrooms, which are mostly made of water and very soft, could actually hold something of weight,” says Ng Sze Kiat, founder of Bewilder, a five-year-old Singapore-based design studio that works exclusively with fungi. “A few people even wanted to purchase it.”
Ng admits the coffee table is “weird”, and that is precisely the point. To his knowledge, it’s the first to incorporate a living canopy of mushrooms grown from a mycelium base, all supporting a glass top. “I wanted to push boundaries,” he says, “to see what mushrooms can actually do.”
From sofas and partition walls to acoustic panels and coasters, the range of mycelium products is, well, mushrooming. The most compelling reason is environmental: grown from agricultural waste, mycelium transforms discarded matter into valuable, non-toxic items that contribute to healthier indoor environments.