In the current context, where sustainable development has become a global imperative, the search for bio-based materials presents unique challenges and opportunities. This perspective arises from the need to balance social, economic, and environmental impact, thus ensuring the long-term viability of projects and companies. Mycelium, as a bio-based material, represents an innovative alternative for sustainable product design, offering exceptional characteristics of biodegradability and low environmental impact. Biomimicry, a biologically inspired creative approach that uses analogies with natural systems, imitates nature's models, processes, structures, and strategies to solve human problems, can offer potentially transformative alternatives in product development. This study aims to explore and evaluate the application of biomimetic principles in teaching mycelium design, as well as analyze its potential as a bio-based material for sustainable product development. Through an empirical methodology, practical projects were developed with final-year design students, exploring mycelium's possibilities as a material and its application through biomimetic principles, thus fostering experiential learning and practical understanding of biomimetics. Furthermore, as a principle of circular economy, biomimicry is based on learning from strategies that living organisms have developed over millions of years of evolution. The study results demonstrate that mycelium presents exceptional properties as a bio-based material: complete biodegradability and compostability, notable strength and flexibility, cushioning capacity, and high moldability to adapt to various product designs. Students successfully developed innovative proposals leveraging these characteristics, demonstrating the material's viability for sustainable design applications. By observing how nature designs competent and virtuous materials and structures, both creativity and innovation in designing with bio-based materials, guided through the biomimetic process, provide broad possibilities to meet environmentally informed and conscious needs of consumers and generate tangible value and benefits for companies, such as customer loyalty, greater process efficiency, and improved competitiveness. The applicable biomimetic foundations, examples of mycelium applications, nature-inspired designs, and future trends in this field are discussed. The conclusions highlight the potential of biomimicry and mycelium to transform product design, offering ecological and efficient alternatives, while validating the effectiveness of the experiential educational approach in teaching sustainable design.

Keywords: Bio-based Materials, Biomimetics, Design Education, Mycelium, Sustainable Design