The Future Home: Innovative Design for Human and Plant Cohabitation: mushroom incoulation for bioremediation

Statement

We are a design lab based in Joshua Tree, California. Our purpose is to:
1) Look at plants as technology but from a human and creative perspective
2) Pursue the potential many plant species have for removing toxins and adding moisture to the breathing zones in our homes, offices, clinical spaces, and commercial spaces.
3) Encourage the co-habitation of plants and humans.
4) Increase the appeal of incorporating plants into our living spaces by applying good, sustainable design principles to existing methods of keeping houseplants.
5) Personalize the breathing zones of individuals based on their environmental health concerns such as benzene or formaldehyde exposure.
6) Re-imagine the kitchen’s tea cupboard and spice rack as a living resource.
7) Re-imagine the bathroom’s medicine cabinet as a living resource offering safer, lasting, fresher, and more holistic alternatives to many of the commercial items that are conventionally stocked in medicine cabinets at home.
8) Critically engage the ways in which plants can be used for aesthetic purposes in interior design.

In this pursuit we are currently developing the following design lines:
“Sustainable Air Filtration”
“Sustainable Humidity Maintenance”
“Living Medical Resource”
“Living Kitchen Resource”
“Built-In and Mobile Terrarium Installations”
“Interior Desert-scaping”

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

mushroom incoulation for bioremediation

In order to inoculate mushrooms it seems you have to have a very clean environment for them. The spores that we used are warm-weather button mushrooms. After we have the inoculated cakes from the first part of the process we will use the spoil produced from the worm compost project. The mushrooms will remove toxins from the soil and will be a good source of food.

Part 1:

Materials

-12 1/2 pint jars

-8 cups of vermiculite

- 2 2/3 cups of brown rice flour

- 2 2/3 cups water

-perlite

-mushroom spores

Process:

1) mix the vermiculite, brown rice flour first, then add the water and stir the mixture (note: for more nutrients add a teaspoon or two of honey to boiling water)

2) in the bottom of each jar put a thin layer of perlite for drainage

3) fill the rest of the jar with the mixture that will be come the cakes out of which the mushrooms will grow

4) seal each of the jars and boil then for about an hour

5) after they have cooled, punch a hole in the lid of the jar on to sides and add the spores on the side of the mixture

6) secure a coffee filter on top of the jars and KEEP MOIST

7) cover the jars with a plastic bag to keep in moisture