Phil Ross uses fungus to make bricks and furniture
Far from a fairytale, a San Francisco professor and artist is defining fresh adaptations of lowly fungi to the needs of a modern society
Once upon a time, an avant-garde senior citizen, being way ahead of the design curve, lived in a shoe. Another occupied a house that eschewed concrete, bricks, tiles and glass in favour of gingerbread and gateaux. And an artist and erstwhile chef decided it would be an environmentally engaging idea to grow a house from mushrooms.
Without wishing to challenge the veracity of the world's bootmakers and confectioners, the first two tales may not be entirely true. Not only is the third genuine, it could also be the shape of things to come.
Scepticism, however, seemed critics' default position when artist, professor, designer and radical thinker Phil Ross was still in the early days of his experiments with fungi. Such were the mid-90s. Today, attitudes and opinions are less hostile.
Ross, 47, conducts research and fashions practical items from fungus in a studio near San Francisco. And while the idea of fungus as a basic building material may seem outlandish, the psychological foundations for its widespread acceptance have already been laid.
"People are willing to consider it beyond a freaky thing," says Ross. "There has been a cultural evolution - a maturity now that means it doesn't have to be classified as hippy technology."
His creations, some realised with the judicious addition of wood, have included architectural models, walls made of lingzhi bricks, baskets, stools, easy chairs and a simple, arched "teahouse", which lived up to its name in a literal sense: at the 2009 Eat Art exhibition in Dusseldorf, Germany, the structure was slowly boiled down into tea and served to visitors.