Mycelium Soban
Category: Furniture
Competitions: Home Competition 2026
Mycelium Soban reinterprets the traditional Korean soban, a small, portable dining table designed for one person, through the local materials and food culture of London. Historically, soban developed distinct forms across different regions of Korea, shaped by the materials and craft techniques available locally. In this sense, soban was never simply a table, but an object that embodied the natural environment and way of life of its place. As a Korean designer based in London, I wanted to carry this essential quality of soban, its rootedness in locality, into the context of contemporary London. According to the UK Tea & Infusions Association and the British Coffee Association, around 100 million cups of tea and 98 million cups of coffee are consumed in the UK every day. The Royal Academy of Engineering reports that this consumption generates over 500,000 tonnes of waste coffee grounds annually. Mycelium Soban begins by reframing these organic by-products of everyday urban consumption, not as waste, but as a new form of local material native to London itself. Tea and coffee grounds collected from across London are used as a growth substrate for mycelium, which is cultivated to form the tabletop of the soban. This process reconnects the traditional principle of soban-making, which uses materials sourced from the immediate surroundings, with the circular resource systems of a modern city. The finished soban is placed within Britain’s food and drink culture, most notably the tradition of afternoon tea. Teabags rest on the tabletop, while a brass vase at its centre holds flowers chosen to complement the aroma and flavour of the tea. While drinking, users experience the scent, colour and form of both the tea leaves and the flowers, drawing them closer to the origins and material qualities of what they consume. After use, the spent teabags are collected once again and used as nutrients for cultivating the next batch of mycelium material. Through this cycle, in which the by-products of consumption become the source of future materials, Mycelium Soban proposes a sustainable tea table that connects tradition with modernity, Korea with London, and consumption with production.
