What if the material for a lamp, vase, or chair did not begin in a mine or a petrochemical plant, but in a field, forest, fermentation tank, or fungal network?
That question is shaping a new generation of interior objects. Designers are working with fruits that harden into shells, fungi that bind agricultural fibers, bacteria that produce sheets of cellulose, and algae that supply pigments and polymers. These materials are often described as grown, bio-based, or biomaterials.
The language can make them sound futuristic. The underlying idea, however, is ancient. Humans have always made objects from things that grow: wood, gourds, grasses, fibers, leather, paper, and natural rubber. What feels new today is the expanding range of biological sources, along with new ways of cultivating, processing, and forming them.
Grown materials invite us to imagine a different relationship with the objects in our homes—one in which nature is not merely pictured in a botanical print or imitated by a plastic wood grain, but is physically present in the object itself.
Yet biological origin alone does not make a product sustainable. To understand the real potential of grown materials, we need to look beyond the ingredient and consider the entire material system.
What Is a Grown Material?
“Grown material” is a broad design term rather than a single technical category. It generally describes a material whose useful form or primary feedstock is produced by a living organism.
Some are grown by plants:
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Gourds develop their own hard, hollow shells
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Hemp and flax produce strong fibers
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Cork regenerates as the outer bark of the cork oak
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Loofah fruits mature into fibrous structures
Others are cultivated through biological processes:
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Mycelium grows through and binds plant matter
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Bacteria produce cellulose membranes during fermentation
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Algae can be cultivated for pigments, oils, and polymer ingredients
The more formal phrase bio-based material refers to a material derived wholly or partly from renewable biological resources. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation includes familiar materials such as wood, paper, natural textile fibers, rubber, and leather within this category when they are used in durable products.
Not every bio-based material is literally “grown into” its finished shape. Hemp may be harvested, separated into fiber, woven, and upholstered. Paper pulp may be molded. Algae may supply only one ingredient in a composite. The term is most useful as a way to distinguish renewable biological inputs from finite geological ones—not as proof of a product’s final impact.
Why Are Grown Materials Appearing in Contemporary Interiors?
The rise of grown materials is partly an environmental response. Furniture and decorative objects rely on large quantities of extracted and manufactured matter, including plastics, metals, foams, resins, and mineral-based finishes. Designers are searching for renewable sources and productive uses for agricultural by-products.
But environmental need is only part of the story. Grown materials offer qualities that highly standardized industrial surfaces often lack.
They preserve evidence of growth
Fibers, pores, veins, mottling, and irregular silhouettes reveal how a material formed. A gourd retains the proportions it developed on the vine. Mycelium shows subtle differences in density and color. Bacterial cellulose records folds and variations created during cultivation and drying.
They make variation valuable
Industrial production traditionally treats inconsistency as a defect. Biological materials encourage another visual language—one in which two objects can belong to the same family without being identical.
They connect new design with old knowledge
Some materials presented as contemporary innovations have deep cultural histories. Gourds, for example, have long been used as vessels, utensils, instruments, and ceremonial objects. In ancient Hawaiʻi, dried ipu served as water vessels, bowls, and storage containers, according to the National Park Service.
They offer unfamiliar sensory qualities
Grown materials can be light but voluminous, soft but structural, fibrous, translucent, warm, or subtly aromatic. Their appeal is not simply that they replace another material. At their best, they give designers a new vocabulary.
Seven Ways Materials Can Be Grown for the Home
Rather than seeing biomaterials as one aesthetic category, it is more useful to understand the different ways biology can become an interior object.
1. The Object Can Grow in Its Own Form: Gourd
A hard-shell gourd is unusual because nature performs much of the initial forming process. The fruit grows around an empty interior, developing a lightweight shell and an individual geometry. Once mature, it can be harvested, dried, opened, cleaned, and shaped into a lasting object.
This differs from materials that must first be pulverized and remade in a mold. The original fruit remains legible. Its curves, surface markings, and slight asymmetries are not decorative effects applied afterward; they are records of growth.
Across cultures, makers have carved, burned, painted, perforated, wrapped, and combined gourds with materials such as leather and basketry. The Smithsonian’s collections include gourd water vessels, ladles, and decorated objects, while ceramic and stoneware traditions have repeatedly imitated the gourd’s form.
In contemporary interiors, gourd is suited to:
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Sculptural vases and decorative vessels
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Pendant lamps and table lighting
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Incense holders and aromatherapy objects
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Bowls, ornaments, and tabletop accessories
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Carved narrative and collectible craft
Gourd demonstrates that a grown material does not have to feel like a laboratory invention. It can be at once ancient and contemporary: a familiar fruit reconsidered as a modern design material.
2. A Living Network Can Bind Other Matter: Mycelium
Mycelium is the branching network through which fungi grow. In material production, selected fungi are introduced to a substrate—often agricultural fibers or residues. As the mycelium spreads, it binds the loose matter into a unified form. The composite is then dried or heated to stop growth.
Because the material can be cultivated in a mold, a lampshade or panel can grow close to its final geometry. Its appearance varies with the fungal species, substrate, growth conditions, and finishing process, producing surfaces that may resemble pale cork, stone, felt, or bread crust.
For interiors, mycelium is being explored in lighting, acoustic products, small furniture, decorative panels, and packaging. Research reviews describe its potential while also emphasizing that performance depends heavily on formulation and processing. “Mycelium” is therefore not one standardized substance; it is a family of composites.
The important design question is not merely whether fungi were involved. It is what the fungi were grown on, what coatings or additives were introduced, how durable the finished object is, and what can happen to it after use.
3. Microorganisms Can Build a Sheet: Bacterial Cellulose
During fermentation, certain bacteria can produce a membrane of nearly pure cellulose. The wet sheet is harvested, washed, dried, and sometimes layered, dyed, molded, or treated.
The result can range from translucent and paper-like to dense and leather-like. In lighting, its uneven surface filters light without appearing mechanically patterned. In screens and sculptural objects, folds and wrinkles can remain visible as part of the material’s character.
Bacterial cellulose is still an emerging interior material. Moisture response, coatings, production speed, durability, and scale all require consideration. That limitation can also be creatively productive. Instead of forcing the material to replace every conventional textile or plastic sheet, designers can use it where its delicacy and luminosity are assets.
4. A Fast-Growing Organism Can Supply Color and Polymers: Algae
Algae-based design covers a wide field. Algae can provide natural pigments, oils, foaming ingredients, or feedstocks for polymer-like materials. It may appear in a dyed textile, translucent decorative sheet, 3D-printed object, lampshade, tile, or small accessory.
This versatility makes algae visually exciting and linguistically confusing. An “algae material” may contain a high proportion of biological content, or algae may be only a colorant or additive. Some products are blended with conventional plastics to achieve strength, flexibility, or water resistance.
That does not make algae irrelevant. It means the finished composition matters more than the headline. A responsible description should say what role the algae plays, how much is present, whether the other ingredients can be separated or recovered, and what disposal route is realistic.
5. A Plant Can Grow a Ready-Made Structure: Loofah
Loofah is commonly encountered as a bath sponge, but it is actually the dried internal network of a mature fruit in the gourd family. Once the skin and seeds are removed, a lightweight lattice remains.
That lattice is naturally porous, flexible, and visually intricate. Designers have investigated loofah in lampshades, acoustic explorations, screens, cushioning, composite reinforcement, and decorative objects.
Loofah offers a useful contrast with engineered plant-fiber materials. It does not need to be woven to acquire an open structure; the plant has already created one. Its limitations—irregular dimensions, moisture sensitivity, and modest load-bearing ability—suggest smaller-scale or hybrid applications rather than indiscriminate substitution.
Used thoughtfully, loofah can bring a warm, filtered quality to light and a surprising level of visual detail to an interior.
6. A Plant Can Produce Fibers for Weaving and Molding: Hemp and Flax
Hemp and flax show how established natural fibers can enter new forms. They can be spun and woven into upholstery, drapery, rugs, and cushions, but they can also be felted, pressed into panels, or combined with a matrix to create molded furniture shells and accessories.
Here, the final product is no longer simply the plant as harvested. Its environmental profile depends on agricultural practices, retting and fiber separation, dyes, backing materials, resin systems, and whether different components can be separated.
The fibers themselves bring visible texture that suits contemporary interiors. Woven forms feel tactile and familiar; molded composites can appear precise from a distance while revealing flecks and strands up close.
The best applications allow the plant fiber to remain expressive rather than burying it beneath coatings designed to imitate conventional plastic.
7. Trees Can Yield Regenerative Surface Materials: Cork and Natural Rubber
Not every grown material requires harvesting the entire organism. Cork is removed from the outer bark of cork oak trees, which continue living and regenerate their bark. Natural rubber is obtained from latex tapped from rubber trees.
Both have long histories, but contemporary designers are expanding their applications. Cork can become sculptural stools, side tables, lamp bases, trays, wall objects, and dense monolithic forms. Natural rubber can contribute elasticity, grip, cushioning, and flexible surfaces.
These examples broaden the meaning of material innovation. Sometimes progress comes not from inventing an unprecedented substance, but from using a renewable material more intelligently, designing for repair, and moving it into applications where its natural properties reduce the need for complex composites.
Are Bio-Based Materials Automatically Sustainable?
No. “Bio-based” describes where at least part of a material comes from. It does not guarantee how the source was cultivated, what else the product contains, how long it will last, or what will happen at the end of its life.
The distinction is especially important with bio-based plastics. As the Ellen MacArthur Foundation explains, bio-based refers to origin, while biodegradable and compostable refer to possible end-of-life behavior under specified conditions. A product can be partly plant-derived and still persist like conventional plastic.
To evaluate a grown material more meaningfully, ask six questions.
1. How was the biological source produced?
Renewable does not mean unlimited. Land use, water, soil health, biodiversity, chemicals, and labor conditions all matter. A biological resource is renewable only when its ecosystem has adequate time and space to regenerate.
2. Is it made from a primary crop or a secondary stream?
Agricultural residues, food-industry by-products, textile waste, and forestry side streams can reduce demand for new feedstocks. Yet “waste-based” is not a complete answer either; transport, cleaning, processing, and competing uses need to be considered.
3. What else is in the finished material?
Ask about binders, backing layers, foams, dyes, flame retardants, finishes, and protective coatings. A small amount of plant fiber embedded in a conventional resin may behave more like a plastic composite than a natural material.
4. Is the object designed to last?
Biodegradability is not necessarily the first priority for furniture and décor. A home object should usually remain useful for years. Durability, repairability, emotional attachment, and timeless design can keep material value in use.
5. Can the components be separated?
A natural lampshade permanently bonded to complex hardware may be difficult to repair or recover. Mechanical fasteners, replaceable electrical parts, mono-material construction, and clear disassembly instructions can matter as much as the headline material.
6. Is there a realistic end-of-life route?
“Compostable” may require an industrial facility that is not available locally. Coatings may prevent a natural material from returning safely to soil. Some objects are better reused, repaired, refinished, or repurposed before biological recovery is considered.
What Grown Materials Change About the Look of a Home
The most interesting effect of grown materials may be cultural and emotional rather than purely technical.
Modern interiors are often composed from flat, repeatable surfaces. Grown materials introduce another rhythm. A fiber changes direction. A shell is slightly uneven. A translucent membrane filters light differently across its surface. The object appears designed, but not entirely controlled.
This does not require filling a room with rustic textures. A single natural object can sit comfortably within a minimal, modern, or highly polished space. In fact, contrast often makes its character more visible.
Consider:
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A carved gourd vessel against a clean stone tabletop
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A mycelium pendant above a precise metal table
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A cork side table beside tailored upholstery
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A bacterial-cellulose shade glowing in an otherwise tonal room
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A loofah screen softening sunlight near glass and concrete
The goal is not to make a home look “eco-friendly.” It is to create a home with greater material depth—one where objects reveal different relationships between nature, culture, craft, and technology.
From Material Novelty to Material Relationship
Grown materials are often presented as a parade of inventions. That framing can make the future of sustainable design seem dependent on discovering one miraculous replacement after another.
A better question is not “Which new material will save design?” It is “What relationship does this object create among land, maker, user, and future use?”
That question leaves room for new science and old knowledge. Mycelium and bacterial cellulose can expand what designers are able to cultivate. Hemp and cork can be reconsidered through contemporary processes. Gourd can remind us that a material does not become innovative only when it is newly invented.
Sometimes nature has already grown the form. The designer’s work is to notice what it can become.
At G Home, the gourd is our lens for exploring that possibility. Each fruit arrives with its own geometry, connecting contemporary objects to a material people have shaped across cultures for thousands of years. Through our original designs and the pieces gathered in our Heritage Collection, we invite natural variation, cultural craft, and material story back into the modern home.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are grown materials in interior design?
Grown materials are materials whose form or primary feedstock is produced by living organisms. Examples include gourds, wood, cork, hemp, flax, loofah, mycelium composites, bacterial cellulose, and algae-derived materials.
What is the difference between a biomaterial and a bio-based material?
In design writing, the terms often overlap. “Bio-based” usually means a material is derived wholly or partly from renewable biological resources. “Biomaterial” can be used more broadly, although in medical science it also has a specific meaning: a material designed to interact with a biological system. For interiors, bio-based material is generally the clearer term.
Are bio-based materials biodegradable?
Not necessarily. Bio-based describes the source, not the disposal behavior. Synthetic binders and coatings may prevent biodegradation, and some compostable materials require controlled industrial conditions.
Is gourd a grown material?
Yes. A hard-shell gourd grows its own hollow, structural shell on a vine. Once mature and dried, that shell can be cleaned, cut, carved, perforated, burned, painted, or combined with other components to become vessels, lighting, and decorative objects.
How can I add grown materials to my home?
Begin with one object you genuinely want to keep: a natural-fiber textile, cork side table, paper-pulp sculpture, mycelium lamp, or gourd vessel. Check its complete composition, care instructions, repair options, and end-of-life guidance rather than relying on a single material claim.