Welcome to the world of eco-technology
Krown combines biotechnology with ecology, named 'Eco-Technology'. Applying biotechnology while respecting nature and its social context.
Through holistic thinking and deep research; By understanding and redesigning complex processes, incorporating its possible natural and environmental impact in relation to its political, economical and social context.
Our ambition is to restore ecology and capture carbon through production, a journey that started back in 2010. Setting new standards, going beyond 'Climate Neutral' towards 'Climate Positive Production'. Embedding restorative design processes and setting up corresponding networks and infrastructures. This combined with new technologies such as robotics and biotechnology, enabling and boosting local production, is what Krown has been initiating over the past decade.
Mycelium Chair 2018/2019 - Klarenbeek & Dros - Permanent collection Centre Pompidou
The Blueprint
Krown started from an intrinsic and filantropic drive of Klarenbeek & Dros to use the benefits of biotechnology for the cultivation (instead of fabrication) of goods. By collaborating with a team of scientists from the University of Wageningen (WUR), they started exploring one-cellular organisms combined with 3D printing and robotics, a technique Klarenbeek & Dros optimised over the years (mycelium project, mycelium chair)
The ambition to scale the technology and create actual impact, was the beginning of Krown, first launched at the Dutch Design Week 2015.
The challenge of scaling, was to initiate and realise the infrastructure for production, by inspiring and motivating the mushroom cultivation sector in the Netherlands to look at growing materials, and expend their activities on substrate production, besides growing mushroom substrate for food application only. The mushroom sector is a highly specialised and developed industry leading in Europe and operating for over 150 years. Mushrooms don't grow on land, but indoors possibly underground and vertically.
Hemp
Known as the digestors of everything in nature, the process is characterised by first collecting vegetative waste streams. These vegetative fibers are sanitised and inoculated with mycelium, the root structures of mushrooms. The mushroom strain applied, is a mushroom known and used by humans for thousands of years, once reclaimed from nature and cloned in the lab. Its a specie you'll find everywhere on the planet and won't interfere nor disturb local ecology and hasn't been modified. Cloning is a typical and controllable technique used in the mushroom industry, basically every consumption mushroom you'll buy at your local grocery store is cloned. Mycelium needs vegetative matter to grow on, and when looked at mycelium materials, they're typically grown on hemp husks, the waste stream of hemp-fiber cultivation.
The cultivation of fiber-hemp is mostly concentrated around Groningen, as an exchange crop, meaning land that needs rest is used to grow hemp on. No pesticides are used, so the crops are pure and the material can be considered as Ecologically cultivated, though the land where its grown on, might contain traces, and therefore the material isn't ecologically certified.
About
Krown is best known as the first company in Europe that produces mycelium based projects and products. Activities are expended towards the developments of algae based biopolymers, of which you can find more at weedware.org.
Krown is an initiative of Klarenbeek & Dros - www.dotunusual.com