A chair that was grown, not made: mycelium furniture reaches production quality
Studio Fen's Hyphae chair is cultivated in a mould over eleven days. Its significance is less the object than the supply chain behind it.
Words Yuki Tanabe 18 Aug 2026 5 min read
Photography courtesy of the studio
The Hyphae chair begins as hemp waste inoculated with mycelium — the root network of fungi — packed into a chair-shaped mould. Eleven days later it is dried, halting growth, and finished with a plant-based sealant. No adhesives, no foam, no fasteners: the material binds itself.
Grown furniture has existed as gallery provocation for a decade. What Rotterdam-based Studio Fen has changed is repeatability. Their climate-controlled growing racks produce forty identical chairs per cycle with a rejection rate under five per cent — numbers a furniture brand can build a product line on.
The seat's compressive strength now matches moulded plywood, though the studio is candid about limits: the material dislikes standing water and ultraviolet light, placing it firmly indoors for now.
‘Compostable is what you say when you expect to be thrown away. We'd rather be kept.’
At end of life the chair is compostable, but the studio's founder resists leading with that. 'Compostable is what you say when you expect to be thrown away,' she argues. 'We'd rather be kept. The material patinates like leather — it should age in a family, not a landfill.'
Three European furniture labels have licensed the process. The chair goes on sale in spring; the growing racks, arguably the real product, are already sold out.