We’re Living In A Mushroom Kingdom

It wouldn’t be wrong to say Sam Shoemaker crossed the ocean on a mushroom. This August, the Californian artist launched his 14-foot kayak off Catalina Island and paddled for 12 hours across the 26.5-mile Catalina Channel to San Pedro. He says when he lost strength during the last miles, a fin whale appeared and accompanied him. But even more astonishing is the brownish-white boat itself: “a boat made entirely from a single mushroom growing outside my studio,” Shoemaker explains — the world’s largest mushroom boat. 

He built it from wild Ganoderma polypore collected near his LA studio, propagated in a hemp-and-sawdust substrate for about four weeks, molded into kayak form and dried until it became “a strong, hydrophobic and inert, cork-like material.” Mycelium, the interconnected root network of a fungus such as Ganoderma polypore, can grow to hundreds of acres. The boat was sealed with locally sourced beeswax, using no synthetic materials or hardwood. 

Shoemaker’s multiyear project wasn’t commercial — he is simply interested in demonstrating mushrooms’ potential. His invention is part of AquaFung, a term coined — and a movement inspired — by artist Phil Ross that hopes to one day replace Styrofoam and other materials that go into water with fungi, as part of the nonprofit Open Fung. In their quest, Shoemaker and Ross are members of a sprouting global community of artists, engineers, high-end designers and environmentalists, intent on producing sustainable inventions from mushrooms.

For Ross, mycelium is not just a material but a mystery and companion. “I literally live with the mushrooms,” he says, pulling out examples in his home in the woods near Santa Cruz, including brown surfboards he shaped from mycelium. “Mushrooms are in my house, in bags on the counter. I take them on walks to rivers and beaches.”

Fungi, he argues, are inherently democratic. “They’re everywhere. They eat garbage at room temperature. If we can formalize that information, you’ll be able to grow vital things out of what you now throw away, without shipping it around the world.”

From there, Ross’s explorations unfolded into what became MycoWorks, a company he co-founded in 2013. It is now known for its luxury-grade mycelium leather, marketed under the brand name Reishi. “You can take it from something like a turd to an Hermès bag,” Ross says with a laugh. “It has that capability to be all of those expressions.”

In MycoWork’s 136,000-square-foot facility in South Carolina, a lignin-rich base like sawdust, hemp, or paper pulp is steam-cooked before introducing fungi. “The mycelium will grow across your food in your refrigerator the same way, creating this fuzzy layer on top of it,” Ross explains. “After a few weeks, the skin is peeled off and can then be treated, cured, tanned and processed similar to leather, but with a dramatically reduced footprint.”

The resulting biodegradable material has “the sensuous characteristics of a luxury animal skin” but, as Ross notes, “even outperforms them in some cases because it can be engineered as it’s growing.” Fibers and textiles can be introduced during growth, allowing precise control over thickness, drape and feel.

A Birkin-style bag fashioned from Reishi by Hermès made headlines in Paris in 2021, the first of many collaborations pointing toward an era when handbags, boots and car seats might all be stitched from fungus rather than cows. Cadillac already incorporates it in its car interiors, Italian furniture maker Ligne Roset debuted a new mushroom-leather sofa this year, and interior designers drape the hides as tapestry across rooms and restaurants. Ross still marvels at the transformation: “It blows my mind. Even now, it feels uncanny. I can’t believe it’s mushrooms.”

What’s striking is that this was never a business Ross sought out. “It was very much in response to demand… like what does the world want mushrooms to do?” As it turns out, the world wanted a sustainable, supple, vegan alternative to leather, and MycoWorks’ fungal skins fit the mold.

“Now even NASA is interested in developing a mycotexture program for Mars and lunar habitation,” says Ross, shaking his head in wonder, mentioning that one Open Fung member divides their time between NASA and Open Fung. “The hardest part is limiting yourself. You’re dazzled by the cave of jewels that mushrooms open into. But to scale, you have to pick one thing and make it better and better.”

Scale, of course, is key. The cost of materials such as Reishi are currently comparable to luxury leather, although proponents argue that major upscaling is realistic and would help bring costs down significantly.

Beyond MycoWorks, an entire ecosystem of startups is emerging, extending fungi’s reach from furniture and fashion to architecture and urban design. Ecovative, based in New York, has pioneered biodegradable packaging to replace Styrofoam and expanded into mushroom-based foams for fashion and consumer products. 

In the U.K., Biohm produces mycelium insulation panels that are carbon-negative, naturally fire-resistant and increasingly used in sustainable buildings. Italian startup Mogu designs acoustic tiles and floor panels now installed in European offices and hotels, while Dutch designers have explored temporary mushroom-based pavilions, including the Mycelium Pavilion at Milan Design Week, showcasing how fungi can form load-bearing, compostable architectural structures. IKEA has even tested mushroom packaging as a potential replacement for plastics. Together, these ventures suggest that fungal materials may someday line our walls, furnish our offices and fill our closets.

Ross envisions fungi reaching far beyond handbags and kayaks. “If you need a particular statin drug, or an opiate for medicine, mushrooms could generate that from whatever you now consider yard waste,” he says. “They can reorganize matter at room temperature, with nanotechnology precision. That’s a remarkable superpower for humans to adapt ourselves toward.”

And why stop at medicine? “You can imagine telecommunication devices that are organic in nature, not using rare earth metals, but doing computation and other far-out technological things,” Ross suggests. “Mushrooms already build from the atoms up — they’re intimate companions as we move into this biological information space.”

Numerous universities are involved in upscaling fungal materials. Ben Bridgens, a structural engineer by training, used to design big sports stadiums but “slowly became disillusioned with the complete lack of sustainability in big steel and concrete structures,” he says from his office at the University of Newcastle.

Similarly, Ross has turned much of his attention to cooperation: Open Fung is an open cooperation between Stanford and fungi fans around the world. “The same way that we maybe think about water and electricity, or other things as utility, we’re really working towards the creation of how we’re going to rely upon fungus as a general resource,” Ross explains.

Open Fung operates on three interconnected levels — advancing primary science with a research presence at Stanford and Port Labs in Oakland, building a global network of fungal researchers, and engaging culture, art and design to communicate these ideas. Ross sees art as essential to unlocking fungal futures: “The arts and communication and design are really one of the fastest ways to bring people into the future.”

Ross believes the cultural shift may be as important as the scientific one. “Culture works at the speed of trust. Sometimes it takes a lifetime, sometimes it’s instantaneous. What we’re doing with fungi is like radiating ideas — planting seeds that may not flower for 30 years, but that will expand generosity into the world.”

In that sense, the fungal revolution mirrors the fungi themselves: Vast, hidden networks that take time to spread, but once established, reshape ecosystems irreversibly.

Shoemaker’s mushroom boat, bobbing across the Pacific swells, may look whimsical. But it signals a deeper truth: Fungi aren’t just breaking into design, fashion and construction. They may be the quiet architects of a more sustainable future — allies and companions as we learn, at last, to build with nature rather than against it.

Scrolling photos courtesy of:

Phil Ross (Fungal furniture from The Workshop Residence in 2012; Nick Fouquet mycelium hats from MycoWorks in 2022)

Ben Bridgens (Mycelium growth through knitted textile; plastering mycelium paste onto knitted textile formwork; ‘The Living Room’ on display at the Farrell Centre)

Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment, Newcastle University (the BioKnit dome).