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William Ralston
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DUTCH STARTUP LOOP runs a factory in the city of Delft that is unlike any other you’ve possibly visited. On the one hand, as soon as you enter, the smell of mushrooms fills your nostrils like the smell of a forest after the rain. If it sticks to the nose, you will arrive at an old rainy vehicle repair shop, full of refrigerators, radiators, fans and two industrial-sized greenhouses. White lab coats and glassware are dotted, and in one corner are 25 yellowish-white coffins. color of an incisor in poor condition, accumulated and in a position to use. Each is about the length and width of a grown man and is slightly different in color and texture, like polystyrene with a soft, velvety outer coating. This is the production line of a living box in which to bury the dead.
Any other day of work, there would be a dozen staff members busy on site, but the factory closed the bloodless October afternoon I visited, so Loop founder Bob Hendrikx, a 27-year-old man with a long, childish face and wavy dark brown hair, showed me the place. “Outdoor weather situations make a big difference,” says Hendrikx, explaining the production process. “One degree less and you have another product. “
Loop is a design firm built around the undeniable concept of solving disorders by harnessing the unique attributes of living organisms. Their first product, Living Cocoon, is a funerary coffin made of mycelium, the tangle of microscopic filaments that exists beneath a fungus. the fungus is the fruitful frame (think apples or oranges), the mycelium is the rest of the tree: roots, branches and everything.
When fungi reproduce, they release spores into the air that, when they fall on a substrate in a suitable environment, produce cylindrical white filaments called hyphae. As they grow and branch, they create networks of hyphae called mycelium. The fungus you see on the ground is just a small component of the body; the rest spread like roots under the ground, spreading in all directions. Taking into account time, resources and optimal conditions, the mycelium can be enlarged. The largest ever recorded, a specimen of Armillaria ostoyae found in Oregon in 1998, covers a total of 2,384 acres, making it the largest living organism in the world.
Mycelium is the wonderful recycler of nature. When feeding, hyphae release enzymes that can convert biological compounds such as wood and leaves, but also man-made contaminants, adding pesticides, hydrocarbons and chlorine compounds, into soluble nutrients. As such, mycelia have been deployed to plug oil spills and chemical contaminants. Myco-remediation, as the approach is called, is used through the U. S. military. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security to remove neurotoxins and remove asbestos and the Japanese knot discovered at London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park ahead of the 2012 Games.
Petri dishes containing fungal colonies. Those with black mold are faults.
A Loop employee lines a coffin with live foam. It is ornamental but can also decompose.
A loop collects the ingredients of the substrate.
Bob Hendrikx inspects a coffin in the “growth” chamber, where the inoculated substrate is packed into molds and allowed to take shape for about a week.
Living Cocoon coffins are inspected while being shipped.
Living Cocoon caskets and lids come out of their rain molds and will need to be dried in special tents prior to inspection and shipment.
A collection of mushrooms in the Loop laboratory.
Bob Hendrikx pours a solution containing his special mycelium, while a Loop employee uses an electric combiner to combine it into a batch of substrate, in conditions to settle in a coffin-shaped mold.
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