Bio Toys

Mycelium Composites for Circular Play Systems

Role: Materials Research and Product Development Lead
Type: Applied Research in Bio-Based Manufacturing
Partners: Magical Mycelium Company

Introduction

Bio Toys investigates how mycelium-grown composites — living materials cultivated from fungal networks — can redefine the material foundation of the toy and playground industries.
The project treats biofabrication not as novelty but as infrastructure — a means of designing systems that grow, decompose, and regenerate within their own ecological cycles.

By merging biological growth processes with industrial safety standards, Bio Toys positions mycelium as both material and metaphor: a networked intelligence that models how play systems can participate in circular economies of matter and meaning.

Growth, decay, and reuse are not side effects of design — they are its grammar.

World-Systemic Frame

Plastic’s global dominance is not merely a technical phenomenon but a systemic condition.
It persists because it encodes an economic logic — cheap, durable, externalised.
Bio Toys intervenes in this logic by proposing an alternative metabolism of manufacture, where material lifecycles mirror ecological ones.

In this view, the toy becomes a local node in a planetary network of soil, labour, and learning.
Mycelium-based composites act as both ecological materials and political propositions, demonstrating how material innovation can reprogram the dependencies of industrial infrastructure.

Civil / Civic Reciprocity

The research unfolds across two interdependent domains:

• Civil engineering: the technical dimension of mycelium composite development — growth protocols, moulding processes, compression testing, and durability trials.
• Civic engineering: the ethical governance of material production — safety certification, transparent sourcing, and educational reuse frameworks.

Each prototype thus operates as both a technical product and a civic statement, embodying commitments to safety, traceability, and regeneration within children’s design environments.

Complexity as Method

The methodology treats growth and decay not as failures to be controlled but as informational processes within a living feedback system.

• Material cultivation: controlled mycelium growth under variable humidity and temperature to evaluate density, elasticity, and uniformity.
• Form development: stepping-stone prototypes fabricated via compression moulding and air-drying, designed for playground-scale applications.
• Safety validation: prototypes tested under EN 71-1:2014+A1:2018 (Mechanical and Physical Properties) and EN 71-2:2020 (Flammability), achieving compliance for children aged 3+.
• Lifecycle simulation: longitudinal trials tracking erosion, brittleness, and microbial regeneration, informing design for re-growth rather than disposal.

Failure is treated as signal — evidence of a living system learning through contact with the world.

Diagnosis

The problem is not that plastics are unsustainable, but that sustainability has been abstracted from material experience.
Biofabrication is often positioned as utopian speculation; Bio Toys grounds it through measurable, testable implementation.

Its achievement lies not in replacing plastic, but in redefining durability — from permanence to participation.
A material that decomposes responsibly is not a failure of engineering; it is a triumph of ethics.

Toward Regenerative Infrastructure

Bio Toys establishes a circular design loop — growth, use, composting, and regrowth as a single continuous system.
This redefines toy production as ecological negotiation rather than extraction, aligning biotechnological innovation with civic responsibility.

By integrating biological processes, material testing, and governance frameworks, the project prototypes a biofabricated infrastructure — one that evolves within planetary limits instead of exceeding them.

Conclusion

Design is not about making things last; it is about making systems return.

Bio Toys reframes material research as world-systems engineering — an inquiry into how matter, policy, and play can co-produce sustainable futures.
Its mycelium prototypes are early artefacts of a new industrial imagination, one that measures success not by endurance but by the quality of renewal.

In this vision, the playground becomes a biotechnical commons, and every toy a temporary node in the living archive of Earth’s metabolism.