GROW [WIP]

Mycelium footwear concept

Footwear concept creation

What if shoes could be grown? This personal project explores the functionality of mycelium as both a structural material for footwear cushioning as well as a new method of construction through growth of the midsole into the upper instead of adhesive bonding.

key learnings

Mycelium growth after drying is rigid even with flexible media—I knew that using standard wood pulp from mycelium growing kits would dry rigid, but I added cork to see if it would introduce some flexibility. In this exploration, the cork did not noticeably increase flexibility.
Fiber growth may be a future alternative to adhesives—I was also curious if mycelium would successfully bond to textile by growing its fibers into the the textile fibers. The adhesion was successful in this test, which could lead to other potential explorations of adhesion to different types of textiles and optimization of that bond strength.