How might we combine small-scale manufacturing technologies with carbon-negative, locally sourced biomaterials to create resilient, closed-loop, community-oriented production?

Driven by the belief that sustainability requires an urgent transformation of our resources and production processes toward cyclical natural systems, we sought to contribute to sustainability efforts through developing affordable and locally-centered social-material innovations in biomaterials production.

Using biomaterials that can be found abundantly, sourced locally, and grown affordably, we aimed to test the feasibility of coupling the creative use of biomaterial science with novel manufacturing methods to amplify the advantages of custom biomaterial production on a local scale. With support from the Somerson Sustainability Innovation Fund, we worked across material research and development, product design and testing, and manufacturing process design to create Myco-Type.