The materials for this pair of ‘bio-headphones’ are entirely grown in a laboratory - Yanko Design

You're bound to feel slightly bewildered when you hear the term "bio-headphones". I was besides, initially, when I read about the Korvaa. You lot come across, the Korvaa isn't your regular pair of cans. It isn't made from plastic, memory cream, metallic, leather, or forest (like some premium headphones). Korvaa, on the other mitt, uses a more unusual genre of materials including stuff like fungi, bacteria (the expert kind), and biosynthetic spider silk.

Created equally an "experimental science collaboration that explores the design and functionalities of novel, bio-based, microbially grown materials", Korvaa uses a fungal mycelia for the foam cups, fungi moving-picture show equally a leather substitute to cover the cream-cups, and microbial bio plastics for the outer body. Designed to explore the possibility of using new, bio-based materials to create regular consumer products, the headphones were peradventure the perfect playground. They have size, weight, and ergonomic constraints… plus they require parts that are both hard besides as soft. Korvaa required multiple iterations to arrive at the materials that were finally used in its construction. Some parts needed to be cultured and grown in a mold, while others needed to be freeze-dried to be worked with. At the end, Korvaa'southward build was achieved using a combination of 3D printed yeast, while the cream in the cups was formulated using a combination of a foaming mucus-based protein known as Hydrophobin and a stabilizing plant cellulose. The leather-esque cover on the cream cups is, in fact, fungal mycelium, which lends a rich brown color to the off-white pair of headphones, and right on the within, covering the audio driver, is a mesh-textile created past spinning biosynthetic spider silk into a fabric.

An incredibly unusual experiment to begin with, Korvaa hopes to be a testing-zone for more bio-materials in the futurity. While this isn't a pair of headphones you could selection up from your local electronics shop (or laboratory, perhaps?!), it'south a slap-up initiative to work towards developing and democratizing materials that contribute to a much more circular economy!

Designers: Aivan and Synbio