Mycelium-grown sound insulation
Raising awareness about the potential of mycelium
#mycelium #biobasedconstruction #fossilfreefuture #lessonslearned
To raise awareness about the potential of mycelium, GLIMPS.bio produced mycelium sound insulation tiles. Fossil.Free Ghent expo visitors touched them, rubbed them, smelled them and became intoxicated with enthusiasm for a mycelium future.
We’ll never do it again, though. Read on.
If the goal is to raise awareness, why make sound insulation tiles?
Interestingly, our ambition was in no way to sound insulate anything at all. The city of Ghent was organizing a competition and expo called Post.Fossiel Gent. The challenge: make visitors imagine a city without fossils.
GLIMPS.bio was all about mycelium those days.* We wanted visitors to become enthusiastic about the potential of mycelium and by-products. We wanted to create an immersive experience, to present something tangible. Not in the overused business speak meaning of the word tangible. We wanted something people could literally touch and rub themselves up against.
We wanted to change the way people see mycelium and fungi. Take them from thinking fungi are icky to fungi are fantastic, I want them in my house.
We’re pragmatic people. Mycelium is inherently sound insulating. Think of hanging curtains in an empty room - no matter the precise qualities of the curtain, they will be sound insulating. The infrastructure of our lab implied our mycelium would grow in the form of tiles. Hence, we made mycelium sound insulation tiles.
What did we learn?
On the plus side: a physical installation is a very effective way to raise awareness. It catapults people into a fossil-free future.
On the failing forward side: building an installation is an indisputably inefficient way to raise awareness. The amount of time that creeps into building an installation that you’ll use for just one expo is way out of proportion. We did try using it for another expo, but couldn’t find a good match.
On the unexpected side: we learned a lot about the production and price competitiveness of mycelium. A useful business exercise that might come in handy, one day.
What’s our advice on raising awareness for mycelium?
Do not - we repeat - do not make an installation to use at one event alone. An installation is a brilliant idea if and only if you’ll use it many times. Think about that one LinkedIn connection that talks about their book all the time and presents it at every possible event. That must be you, with your installation.
The production of mycelium insulation tiles doesn’t make sense in our current business model, so we never produced more than one batch. However, we highly recommend you check out Mogu and Fairm to bring mycelium into your home!
“A physical installation is a very effective way to raise awareness. It catapults people into a fossil-free future. It takes them from thinking fungi are icky to fungi are fantastic, I want them in my house. ”
— Jasper Bloemen, co-founder, GLIMPS.bio
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