This Mumbai Couple Is Crafting Furnishings From Mushrooms

In a sunlit residence in Mumbai, a modern console desk sits quietly towards the wall. At first look, it looks like another up to date piece of furnishings — minimal, elegant, purposeful. 

However look nearer, and also you realise the bottom isn’t wooden, stone, or steel. It’s created from mushrooms!

For Huzefa Rangwala, co-founder of Mumbai-based ‘MuseLAB’, a design observe specialising in luxurious areas, this felt greater than only a furnishings buy.

“We purchased two consoles for a shopper mission in Mumbai,” says the architect. “They’re light-weight, simple to maneuver, and purposeful with out overpowering the area. The bottom is fabricated from mushroom columns, whereas the highest is wooden, so it’s each acquainted and experimental.”

Huzefa, whose observe typically works on the intersection of design and sustainability, was intrigued when he first heard of mycelium-based furnishings.

Furnishings that ‘grows’

Mycelium, the basis community of fungi, has lengthy been studied as a materials with exceptional potential. Globally, it has been utilized in packaging and textiles. However in India, its utility in furnishings continues to be uncommon.

“At first, mushroom furnishings sounds uncommon,” he admits. “However the design business contributes considerably to world warming. So, every time fellow designers work with round supplies, I consider it’s essential to assist them. What satisfied me was the honesty in materials innovation,” he says.

His purchasers, too, had been intrigued. “Not everybody is straight away forthcoming, however sustainable design is now a acutely aware alternative,” he explains. “Like gradual vogue, sustainable furnishings is changing into a motion. Some purchasers recognize the uncooked, wabi-sabi aesthetic, whereas others want time to adapt. However for many who worth round design, it’s significant.”

The furnishings, he notes, is surprisingly sturdy. “It’s able to supporting physique weight as much as 70–80 kg. If the identical piece had been forged in concrete, it will be extraordinarily heavy. That is one-tenth the burden but robust,” he says.

For Huzefa, mushroom furnishings goes past aesthetics or performance, it creates a way of group. “Supporting such innovation helps us collectively transfer towards sustainable futures. Designing a fabric is extra impactful than designing a method. That’s why this excites me.”

The designers behind these mushroom consoles are Bhakti Loonawat and Suyash Sawant, founders of ‘Anomalia’, a Mumbai-based observe that’s fairly actually “rising” furnishings.

Turning mushrooms into a fabric of the longer term

Bhakti and Suyash’s story begins in 2010, at an structure college in Mumbai, the place they first met. After graduating in 2015, they each pursued superior research on the Institute for Superior Structure of Catalonia (IAAC) in Barcelona.

Their paths diverged briefly, with Bhakti working with the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, and Suyash practising in Lisbon, earlier than converging once more in 2022 once they returned house to Mumbai. That September, the couple launched Anomalia.

What united them was a shared discomfort with the large waste generated by the development and design industries. “We had been all the time acutely aware of decreasing waste and reusing supplies,” Bhakti remembers. “Mycelium’s regenerative, round nature aligned with our imaginative and prescient. It serves its objective after which biodegrades as a substitute of ending up in landfills.”

Their first experiments had been humble.

In the course of the pandemic, confined to their house, they grew mushrooms in cupcake trays. “That’s after we realised how light-weight but robust the fabric may very well be,” Suyash says.

From there, they graduated to experimenting with bricks, partitions, textiles, and ultimately, furnishings.

Constructing blocks of change

At Anomalia, the couple doesn’t assemble furnishings however grows it. Their first assortment, ‘Grown Not Constructed’, makes use of modular “microblocks” created from agricultural waste certain with mycelium. Every block weighs simply 1.5 kg however can stand up to 1.5 tons of compressive load. These blocks will be assembled into stools, tables, cabinets, or partitions.

The second line, ‘MycoLiving’, explores mycelium textiles as vegan alternate options to leather-based. Skinny sheets of mycelium grown in “overgrowth phases” are peeled, processed, and used for seating and fabric.

“The great thing about this materials is that it’s each robust and round,” says Bhakti. “Most furnishings leads to landfills after 10 to 12 years. Ours can safely return to the soil inside 180 days.”

To enhance sturdiness, the couple bakes or sun-dries the grown blocks, rendering the mycelium inactive and structurally sound. For out of doors use, they apply pure coatings like beeswax or lime plaster.

From Mumbai to Venice and Seoul

When Bhakti and Suyash launched Anomalia in 2022, they may not have imagined how rapidly their fungi-based experiments would journey the world. Inside simply three years, their work discovered a spot on the Venice Biennale in 2025, one of the crucial prestigious platforms for design.

In Seoul, they went a step additional — presenting a putting 4m x 2.4m mycelium facade that confirmed the fabric may stretch past furnishings and enter the realm of structure. The response, they recall, gave them confidence that their imaginative and prescient may scale globally.

Again in India, the curiosity is smaller however regular. They’ve bought six to seven furnishings items thus far, practically 100 blocks in whole, throughout Mumbai and Surat. Each bit is made to order. “We need to hold manufacturing unique and consciously scaled, not mass-produced,” Suyash emphasises.

For now, they accomplice with MYCL in Indonesia, one of many world’s largest producers of mycelium supplies. On the identical time, they proceed to check native amenities with the hope of establishing manufacturing in India. For them, every collaboration is a step nearer to creating mushroom-based supplies a part of on a regular basis life right here.

From crop waste to craft

At a time when the worldwide furnishings business is dominated by mass-produced MDF (medium-density fibreboard), laminates, and plastics, mushroom furnishings gives a radical different.

“It’s biodegradable, robust, and created from crop waste,” Bhakti explains. “Farmers typically burn agricultural residues, worsening air air pollution. As a substitute, we repurpose that waste into one thing useful. It’s a win-win.”

Anomalia’s method additionally blends familiarity with innovation. A lot of their designs mix mycelium bases with wooden or steel tops, making the furnishings each sensible and chic. “We don’t need it to appear to be ‘eco furnishings’. We wish it to look elegant and timeless,” Bhakti says.

Globally, mycelium is now not seen as an experiment however as a critical materials of the longer term. In vogue, luxurious homes resembling Stella McCartney have already launched mycelium leather-based. Automakers are exploring it for seating, and firms like Ecovative are proving its industrial worth in packaging.

For Bhakti and Suyash, probably the most rapid alternative lies in furnishings — an business they consider is prepared for round alternate options in India.

The challenges of working with fungi

Working with a residing materials has its hurdles. Contamination throughout development is widespread, which generally forces them to discard total blocks. Moisture is one other limitation, and untreated mycelium doesn’t carry out nicely outside.

“Designing with mycelium shouldn’t be like clay or cement. You’re not in full management,” Suyash explains. “It is advisable account for airflow, shrinkage, and development patterns. It’s half science, half persistence.”

Financially, too, the journey has been demanding. The couple invested private financial savings and relied on fellowships and grants like Godrej’s to scale. Their architectural observe additionally helps the analysis arm. “We’re bootstrapped, however we need to develop consciously,” says Suyash.

A motion past furnishings

For Anomalia, the purpose shouldn’t be solely to promote furnishings however to shift mindsets. “We don’t need viral merchandise,” Bhakti says. “We wish a grounded method that engages farmers, reduces waste, and makes supplies accessible.”

For Bhakti and Suyash, mushrooms maintain the blueprint for tomorrow. Already, their imaginative and prescient stretches past interiors. They dream of rising a complete home from partitions, roofs, to partitions made solely of mycelium. 

“We dream of rising a complete home from fungi. “That might show its structural potential,” Suyash says.

They maintain a easy but radical perception: supplies ought to dwell their objective after which return to the soil. As they put it, sustainability begins at house — in what we select to make use of and what we select to develop.

Edited by Khushi Arora; all photos courtesy: Anomalia