Biodesign, biophilic design & biomimicry with danielle Trofe
the potential of mycelium as a healthy building material / examples of biophilic design that are truly sustainable / biomimicry as a leading light in the new field of biodesign
Welcome to episode 43 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast, brought to you by Biofilico healthy buildings & interiors.
In this episode I’m chatting to Danielle Trofe, a biodesigner with her own studio in New York who also lectures in biomimicry for The Pratt Institute and Parsons New School.
Danielle’s MushLume collection of lampshades made from organically grown mushroom mycelium and hemp have featured in the seriously cool, eco-luxury 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge amongst other projects and she is a leading proponent of biofabrication - that is using naturally grown materials in product design.
Our conversation covers all of these ‘bio’ terms that may understandably be new for many of you, we also look into the full Life Cycle impact of a design product from production through to end of life, we discuss how biophilic design can when delivered poorly equate to a largely superficial greenwashing of the interior design process, and we introduce the topic of green chemistry, that is research and development around new bio-based materials that designers such s Danielle can then introduce into future product development.
Conversation highlights
biophilic design allows us to connect to nature indoors, reminding us that we are still part of nature
a label of ‘nature-inspired’ doesn't necessarily mean a product is good for both people and planet, poorly delivered examples of biophilic design may in fact be harmful to the environment
biomimicry as a movement is emerging as a rigorous framework for creating design that takes into consideration both our own health and that of the planet.
I think a lot of the biodesign field is really about taking action, it’s not just the study of it but rather how we can actually start making goods that help restore balance back to our ecosystems.
FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI (excuse typos)
Matt Morley
Let's begin with some terminology, specifically ‘biodesign’ and ‘biofabricated design’. How do you describe those two concepts to someone coming to this subject for the first time?
Danielle Trofe
In this past decade, or maybe even a little bit further, biodesign as a term has kind of come out in two different fields, one in the medical field and one in the design field. It's serving a purpose as this catch all term that incorporates biomimicry, biofabrication and biophilic design, to help those who don't really know what each of those different facets really means. So that we can all kind of have the same conversation.
What is Biofabrication?
Biofabrication is what I do, it’s about using a living organism to actually grow a product or design for you. So you're typically extracting something from nature or not, you can actually grow in a lab and and use that living organism to do the producing for you. In this case, I’m not not doing the manufacturing, the organism is actually doing that, for example mycelium - the roots of mushrooms - but also bacteria, algae or kombucha.
What is biophilic design?
I refer to Biophilic Design as the visual copying of nature. We all have Biophilia, we all instinctively connect to nature in different ways, biophilic design is about tapping into that emotional state, that very native energy that we all have inside of us. It allows us to connect to nature indoors, reminding us that we are still part of nature.
What is biomimicry?
Biomimicry goes a bit deeper by looking at Nature's forms, processes and entire ecosystem, so it has these three different levels in other words. The aim is to draw out these principles to integrate them into human design.
Matt Morley
I think it's very clear that you've mastered those concepts, it's often so difficult to give a succinct description of concepts like biophilic design, yet you just managed to do it! Part of your work is in fact in education isn’t it? Besides being a designer you are also a teacher on biomimicry?
Danielle Trofe
Yes, correct. So I've been teaching biomimicry and biodesign at the Pratt Institute and the Parsons New School in Manhattan. I try to help orient students with an understanding of what this new field of nature inspired design is all about. That's really what it is, it is a very new field, that is still unfolding, these terms are really being birthed at the moment, we continue experimenting with them.
Terminology can also vary from region to region. I know in the UK and in Germany, there are different terminologies for biomimicry for example. Everyone involved in this field is collectively trying to come up with a language to be able to talk about these particular topics such as biophilic design.
Matt Morley
There is so much discussion now around healthy buildings, healthy materials and wellness interior design on one side, with concerns over the sustainability of our buildings and interiors, the impact of our built environment on the planet, on the other. It looks to me like biodesign bridges those two worlds of wellness interiors and sustainable buildings.
It is not contributing waste, nor damaging the environment, and at the same time biodesign products are non-toxic, so these bio materials are inherently healthy and help contribute to an Indoor Environmental Quality plan.
Danielle Trofe
Yes… but with the caveat that it is done correctly! So let's talk about that. Yeah, there is poorly delivered biomimicry, biofabrication or indeed biophilic design, right? You could create something that looks exactly like a tree. But if you're using materials that can't be recycled, that take tremendous amount of energy to create or that are mined unsustainably, you're not really completing the holistic viewpoint of what biomimicry is, or hopefully in the larger sense, bio design.
My point is that just because it can fall under that label of nature-inspired, that doesn't necessarily mean that a product is good for both people and the planet. The issue is that there's nobody really there to judge what is or isn’t a high standard of biophilic design, for example.
So we're kind of evolving together to be able to evaluate our own designs. Even if you are taking inspiration from nature, do you have the understanding and the tool set to be able to authentically factor in a products complete life cycle assessment, including where it's coming from, how it's affecting humans / nature during its use phase and the end of life disposal?
Whether that's biophilic design, bio design, biofabrication or biomimicry, one thing that really stands out when you work in these fields is that there's a greater framework for ensuring that a design meets all those needs throughout the process, from inception to production and end of life. This framework ensures that the number one thing and biomimicry is life can do, life creates conditions conducive to life.
That's where I feel biomimicry as a movement is emerging as a more rigorous framework for creating design that really does take into consideration our health and the health of the planet.
Matt Morley
You're practicing what you preach as you apply those same theories in your own products. And so that, in a sense leads us into the MushLume Biofabricated Lamps discussion. Why don't we talk a little bit about how you have created a case study in a way of how to implement these ideas in a product-led business.
Biofabricated lamps
Danielle Trofe
Sure. Yeah, so about eight years ago, I started working with this amazing material that was coming out of upstate New York that was created by Ecovative - a mushroom mycelium material. And so for anyone who doesn't know what Mycelium is, it is the roots of a mushroom.
So just like an apple is the fruit of a tree. Mushroom is the fruiting body of this network of mycelia that live beneath the forest floor. And nature is the big recycler you know, it decomposes all dying and decaying matter in a forest or in an ecosystem. It connects all plants and an ecosystem actually is nature's communicator, it shares information, can warn other plants of impending danger, distributes water within a forest, shares nutrients underground… It really is this incredible organism that is one of the largest terrestrial organisms on the planet. There's one network that's known to be a couple 1000 years old in Oregon and stretches several football fields long.
Mycelium and hemp as healthy materials
We take this mycelium and instead of extracting it out of nature, like we often do for most of our goods, we are we are inoculating it in a lab and reproducing it, then once it is in a liquid form we combine it with hemp and let nature do what it does best - grow! For that we put it in an environment that it wants to grow in, allowing the mycelium to bind to the hemp over a course of just a few days. You will see this white matte structure that actually solidifies all of the hemp.
The hemp is just used as support material for it to grow into, and also food as well. So cellulose, it wants to digest the cellulose. To give an understanding of the application of a lampshade, we create these forms, we pack them with the substrate that's already been inoculated. And then we just leave them to grow, we're not even adding additional water or energy into the production process!
Our largest lampshade, which is a 24 inch diameter dome takes about a week to grow. And if you think about this timeframe, to be able to use wood, you know, you're looking at anywhere from 25 to 100 years of a tree growing out in nature, and then you're harvesting this and you're putting all this energy into being able to process the material to use it.
We isolate mycelium in a lab, transport it a very short distance, and then let it grow in the course of just a few weeks. So you can already start to see the life cycle impact there.
The other most important part which is something that we're not as familiar with, but we're starting to understand its value now, is at the end of its life, the mycelium product is just going to decompose!
Biodegradable at end of life
Traditionally, in the last couple, maybe last 100 years, we've really wanted things to last. We want things to last as long as possible, we want them to be super durable. But we're starting to find out and especially since the invention of plastics that these might not be the best concepts. And rather than using materials that we're not quite sure how they're going to break down to an elemental form and affect our own bodies. We know exactly what's in these lampshades and they are going to actually add nutrients back into the soil rather than pollutants. So that's a completely different concept to a lot of our traditional goods.
And often people are like, Well, is it gonna break down in my living room but it’s actually a very inert material. We do bake it at the end of its growth cycle, that's mainly to damage the cells enough so it won't continue to grow in your living room. It won't spore, it won't shoot off mushrooms. It's a completely stable, inert material in your living room. There's nothing that's going to break it down.
What’s more the lampshades have this incredible soft feel, almost like a lamb's ear. So it's something that you actually want to touch. And there's not many lamps out there that inspire you to interact with it. And of course, that makes it a conversation piece, being able to talk with your guests at the dining room table about the light fixture that's overhead.
Matt Morley
You are rightly pointing out how long a lampshade really needs to be with us, where’s that sweet spot between durability and being biodegradable. I wondered whether the lampshade had anything inherently suited to this particular medium. Could you have done any other number of things but you randomly selected the lampshade? Have you got an entire collection of products in your mind eventually?
Danielle Trofe
Yeah, so that's an excellent question. Part of the story is that Ecovative at the time was working mainly in packaging. So using the material to displace Styrofoam, which is a fantastic use for it.
We reached out to them, ordered samples and we wanted to start working with the idea of using it for a lampshade and it was kind of a crazy idea at that level eight years ago, and it ended up being one of the best use cases for it because of the material’s properties. So to give everyone a better idea - when fully grown, it's very lightweight, it almost has the density of Styrofoam, but has a much softer exterior coat, which is actually the mycelium.
We can actually tune the material and kind of play with a little bit with its coloring. So yeah, we do have some that are not completely white. And that's the other thing about them. Once it's grown, the Mycelium is white, naturally. And that's how we leave them. So there's not any paint that's added to them. That's just the natural form that the mycelium takes.
Mycelium as an alternative to plastic packaging
It's great for packaging for single use packaging but it has limitations in terms of you a product like a chair or stool that is going to get bumped around, rubbed, scratched or knocked over. But for an object that's hanging above you suspended from the ceiling or perhaps a table lamp that's not always being touched, then that’s a perfect case for using mycelium.
There were a number of years of us getting over shipping issues, modifying the form so that when they ship they don't crack or break, and they can be installed easily by the end consumer too. So there were huge learning curves of bringing this biotechnology to a place where you could commercialize a product.
I used to grow everything in Brooklyn, New York, I had a studio space here, and I would grow each one by hand. And just over this past year, year and a half, we move production to a company out in California who now grows all the lampshades for the studio. So we're able to finally expand past my own capabilities.
Biofabricated materials as a future trend
You're really seeing not just the general public, but the industry start to buy into Biodesign. Early on when we started to work with this material, nobody really knew what mycelium was, it was kind of a new term but the conversation has really shifted in the last five years so people know what Mycelium is.
There's all these startups around the world now working with mycelium whereas when I first started, there was maybe a handful around the world. We're talking single digits. So it's really been larger than just one studio or just a few companies. It's now so many young startups, working around biomaterials because they see the value in creating new products that are not going to necessarily pollute the planet or provide a negative impact.
Algae as a healthy material in design
Matt Morley
The other big player then, that I think deserves a mention in our conversation is algae - another biomaterial often mentioned in the same breath along with mycelium. Are you working with algae based materials too?
Danielle Trofe
Yeah, just when I started working with it, and it was for a completely different project, I ended up closing the studio to shift focus a little bit but we do work with it, for example an algae-based pigment to color the lampshades. We're collaborating with artists and designers to paint on our lampshades using algae ink. A start-up in Colorado has developed a new ink pigment derived from algae, which is fantastic.
There's also the Biodesign Challenge, which is a nonprofit organization that has a worldwide competition for young students to be able to create Biodesign applications and then have them be judged by professionals within the field. And there's been so many startups that have come from just these kinds of competitions, and you're really starting to see this field being driven by people that are under 30.
I really I do believe it's the generation underneath mine that is really going to power everything in terms of sustainability because they've inherited something that generations before did not - there has to be action. So I think a lot of the biodesign field is really about taking action, it’s not just the study of it but rather how are we can actually start making goods that help restore balance back to our ecosystems.
Matt Morley
You collaborated with the 1 Hotel brand - they arguably reinvented what ‘eco luxury’ could mean in hospitality. Can you talk to us about that project to help them create an example of biophilic design in one of their suites using your mycelium lampshades?
Biophilic design in hotels
Danielle Trofe
Yeah it was fantastic. Working with 1 Hotel, that really was the project that elevated our lampshades to the next level, we did around 130 lampshades in this huge cloud in the presidential suite at the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge.
Just working with 1 Hotel as a partner, it was really fantastic. We share the same values and be able to create different kinds of opportunities where the public can participate. So for instance, we had an exhibit where people could come in and see the lampshades being grown for the hotel. One of the things I realized is to hear the conversation that we're having now, it's really difficult to not physically see and feel the material, or watch the growing process. Demystifying that experience was really valuable.
The images that we got from that project really captured the possibilities of what our MushLume lampshades could do and have inspired a few other hotel installations since then too. We have grown from that as well I think, those images really did solidify that this is not just a case study. This is not just a single project but a commercialized product - that differentiation was huge. From there, we could move beyond this small niche to compete against big lighting brands.
Vertical gardens
Matt Morley
You've also got a vertical garden product that looks to be essentially a sort of an upright, vertically oriented planter for multiple plants. I'm wondering if you've got more things in the pipeline. Where do you go from here?
Danielle Trofe
Yeah, so the vertical garden was actually originally a hydroponic vertical garden. So that was the first product I ever created. And we launched that back in 2012. And it really kind of grew into a couple of installations with BMW.
The vertical garden now exists in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. So if you go to their Visitor Center, you can see it there. And it's something that hasn't completely come to full realization, mainly because I started getting into the lighting and that kind of took off. But it's something I do want to bring back and one of the main reasons this was lagging is because at the time there weren’t the tools to be able to create those planter pods. They look kind of look like Alien eggs, if you will.
So we created them out of thermoformed plastic which went against everything that I as a designer and as a studio believed in. So we've kind of been in this holding pattern to get to the right material and the right process to be able to recreate this. And that's actually being done right now, with much more sustainable materials.
For example we're looking at upcycling food waste into ceramic planter pods. So that's definitely something that's happening in the future. We hope to actually come out with a full product and not just an installation.
As for future, it's a good question. I recently became a mom. So a lot of things have really shifted. You know, even a fetus can contain over 100 Different manmade chemicals at that stage yet it's extremely difficult to find healthy materials or healthy interior products aimed at babies. That's the next thing I want to get into - green chemistry, and being able to actually bring products that are not toxic to our environments.
Green chemistry to develop new natural materials
Matt Morley
So the green chemistry thing for those who perhaps not clued up on it, that's really where the nature-inspired R&D is taking place that then facilitates people such as yourself as a designer, to create the bio products you envision, that then are sold to bio-friendly businesses like 1 Hotels with their biophilic design in the bedrooms.
If you haven't got the green chemistry, providing you with what you need - the tools and materials to create the products - then the products can’t materialize yet.
Equally, if there isn't also the consumer demand, the end market there to make it all into a viable business proposition, then the products either don't materialize or remain prototypes and concept designs. So we have this delicate dance required to push the industry forward…
Danielle Trofe
Exactly - what you're doing with the Green & Healthy Places podcast is also helping these fields to advance, by communicating these ideas to a wider public. We need to popularize the basics of what Biodesign is about, biomimicry, biophilia, all of the ‘bio whats’ to our industry and beyond, to consumers because ultimately consumers are driving the demand for these bio materials and bio products as well.
Clients are asking for things that are more sustainable. And they're also starting to ask the questions. Well, where does this come from? How was it made? Hopefully ‘where does it end up?’ will be the next question that they're going to ask...!
Danielle’s products are available in Europe through https://www.grown.bio/