La Foundary and Biomaterials

Joel: “La Foundary is your startup. You make vases from mushrooms or mycelium. Can you explain that to me? How do you create a vase from a mushroom?”

Van: “Mushrooms come from the fungi line tree; basically, they can pass through anything that grows underneath our feet. One of the things they’re very good at is digesting stuff on the ground and also binding things together. So one of the things that we do is we make use of that characteristic and feed it with food waste.

There’s a lot of waste in Australia, and one of the things that we use a lot is coffee grounds, sawdust, and a lot of holes coming from the agricultural sector. First, we clean it up. Then, we use a form that we 3D printed using biodegradable POA. We then mix all that waste material with our mushroom ball, put it into that form, and let it grow in there.

The mushroom will then digest it simultaneously and bind all the materials together.”

Joel: Mycelium processes food well, and the byproducts of that processing bond stuff together. Why would you do this? Why make art and other objects out of mycelium or biomaterial?
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Van: “In my Year 12 art class, I liked discovering new ways to do mixed media. It’s a big interest for me — making my own clay and mixtures to create textures and forms on canvases and sculptures. Back then, I did a lot with food waste and binding corn starch or bioplastic, which is essentially gelatin or glycerin.

My art always deals with time and progress. Before La Foundary, there was this one problem in the world that I wanted to address, which is single-use plastic pollution. I came across people who used mushrooms a lot in their work, and the mushrooms turned out to be capable of acting similarly to styrofoam.

But I also wanted to solve another problem: agricultural waste and the world's waste. So all of those things are bound together and are the reason why I want to use mushrooms in the end: to bring this material to the general public so they can see what you can do and what it can replace.”

Joel: It's fascinating that the things you make with biomaterials are not static and will change over time. How do you think about that when you’re creating an object? Will it change over time? Will it degrade or decay in any way? Do you see that as adding to the piece's quality, or should everything have a lifespan?
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Van: “I think I lean more towards the second idea. In my generation, there’s a big cycle of new trends and products. I like buying new stuff and changing things in my room every year. And I think that owning something that can be degraded nicely would be great later on. A definite lifetime would be good. It would make us think about the consumerism mindset, where we always want to get something new and throw the old stuff away.”

Joel: Thinking of the future of this form of creativity, what could be made with biomaterials like mycelium? What do you think the future of this creative field is?
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Van: “I think many artists are trying to find new mediums to work with. Around the world, like outside of Australia, people have been doing a lot of crazy things with mycelium. People build big houses and structures using this material, and they just see how it degrades over time for the mycelium structure.

I think that’s a big interest for me: to see big structures and how people interact with the biomaterial surrounding them. One of the big things I want to see is mycelium material in architecture. If you bring the biomaterial into a living space, how do people observe and interact with it?”

Joel: Wouldn’t it be interesting if you intentionally designed a room, and part of that room was made with biomaterial? The intention was that it would change, degrade, and live, and over time, you would have to create some action that would make sure it didn’t totally die but kept growing. That’s a really interesting idea. What is the ultimate vision of what you could make at La Foundary?
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Van: “Definitely a house. Like a house completely made of mycelium and the supporting structure and furniture inside it. Another thing that I have seen from NASA research is that they want to print a mycelium home on Mars. So one day, if La Foundary does well, maybe we build something out in space.”

Joel: If you could paint a picture for me, what is your vision for La Foundary in the future? If everything goes perfectly well and you’re super successful, what do you hope it looks like in a few years?

Van: “Initially, it was made for me to have a creative outlet to create biomaterial art pieces. Later on, we acknowledged that this material can function as something to serve daily life through protective packaging.

One of our goals is to eliminate single-use plastic and styrofoam. If we are successful, we want to create a lab for people to try and come inside to grow their own biomaterial using mushrooms or other bio-organisms.”