Welcome to the wondrous world of grown materials: fish leather, textiles created from bacteria and horsehair, plastic made from chicken feathers, and the more usual grown materials such as plant fibres and wood. This section is one of the major emerging materials families, an area that encompasses both the big chemical industries – who are looking into extracting proteins from starch to make new types of plastic – as well as research projects from individuals like Fiorenzo Omenetto, a scientist who is developing an incredible array of uses for silk.
This section includes experimental projects based on byproducts of natural waste which are deconstructed to make new types of materials. The urgent need to find rapidly renewable materials is driving designers to experiment with waste materials, for example Erik De Laurens is making a new composite from fish scales, and the rapidly renewable and biodegradable mycelium (grown from the roots of mushrooms in a matter of days) is being used to replace expanded polystyrene.
If, as the introduction to this book points out, one of the key drivers for materials development is the need to find more sustainable materials, then most of these innovations can be found in this section. The last century will be remembered as a time when classical notions of production were blown apart by plastics derived from oil. The next century might see a time when our plastics and products don’t come from machines but are grown. Graze across the crunchy textures, playful interactions, natural patterns and interesting surfaces of materials that are currently being developed.