by A Vancouver academic team is merging the fields of microbiology and architecture to create a living building material made from oyster mushrooms and other edible fungi.
They say their research into “engineered living materials” could help limit the high-energy and environmental impact of the construction industry, replace traditional insulation, or even help regulate indoor temperatures as the climate warms.
One day it could even help filter air pollutants like wildfire smoke, according to a postdoctoral fellow at the University of BC
“This idea of engineered living materials is a very new concept,” said Nicholas Lin, an engineer with expertise in microbiology.
“These materials are assembled by combining raw materials with living cells and they exhibit certain properties of living systems,” explained Lin, whose research crosses between UBC’s schools of microbiology and architecture.
His collaborators at UBC’s Biogenetic Architecture Lab are creating a variety of building materials filled with pore — the fuzzy network of tiny underground threads, or hyphae, that serve a function similar to plant roots.
But fungi, one of the oldest organisms on the planet at more than a billion years old, are neither plants nor animals.
The team of researchers works mainly with edible species, such as oyster tail mushrooms, reishi and turkey.
“Oysry is probably the most popular because we know it’s edible, there’s no known toxicity and it grows very quickly,” said Lin.
‘Dynamic, tunable’
Associate professor of architecture Joseph Dahmen is one of her supervisors.
Dahmen said his main inspiration over his years researching what he calls “breeding bio-composites” is to reduce the energy and environmental impact of building materials.
“The lion’s share of the energy that goes into buildings is in the materials themselves,” he told CBC News. “Mycelium biocomposites provide a type of biodegradable material to replace those.”
To make the engineered living materials – whether bricks, gels that can take any shape, insulation, or boards like drywall – he said the researchers mix mushroom spores with something high in cellulose, often recycled material or by-products such as sawdust, wheat bran. or rice husks.
A 3D printer at the University of BC creates layers of a hydrogel solution infused with reishi mushroom mycelium, a network of thin strands called hyphae that resemble fungal roots. (Submitted by UBC Biogenic Architecture Lab)
Although this has been done for many years around the world with both fungi and bacteria, he explained, often the finished product is “cooked” to kill the organisms.
“We didn’t invent the process,” he said. “But what we’re really interested in is the potential of these materials if they stay alive.
“So you could imagine a subject that becomes dynamic, tunable then. We can make it different strengths. It continues to grow.”
Oyster mushrooms grow out of brick-shaped bricks. They were used to build a wall for an art installation created by AFJD, the design studio of Joe Dahmen and his wife Amber Frid-Jiminez. (AFJD)
‘grows like mushrooms’
While Lin’s PhD research led him to kill microorganisms by creating antibacterial surfaces, he is now using 3D printers to create a gel full of them.
“It’s kind of like really, to kill something and raise it,” he mused. “Some parts of it are quite similar to how you keep a clean culture.
“But there is one thing that is always very interesting – if you neglect the fungi, or if we forget to check up on it – sometimes it will result in a small oyster mushroom.”
The speed with which oysters and other fungi spread allows researchers to quickly test new ideas.
And that’s what led the UBC lab to develop everything from a mushroom-based composting toilet to solid sawdust bricks and benches.
“The saying ‘grows like mushrooms’ is really accurate,” joked Dahmen. “They’re very fast growing, and they tend to be hydrophobic so they can repel water.
“We can match them to the unique environmental circumstances in which we want to employ them.”
A microscope image shows how a spore, which is the root equivalent of mushrooms, spreads or inoculates in a University of BC laboratory. (Submitted by UBC Biogenic Architecture Lab)
Dahmen said that for now an entire house made of living 3-D printed mushrooms is just hypothetical.
“I’d say we’re probably still a few years away from being incorporated into mainstream buildings,” he said. “But we are just beginning to understand some of the possibilities of these materials.”
Built in climate control
Lin said there are some even more complex applications that could be in the future for living building materials – based on what he called the “environmental responsiveness” of fungal hyphae.
A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this year it was found that mushrooms can lower their temperature an average of 3 C below their environment – which, Lin said, could indicate climate control functions as the climate warms.
As climate change worsens Canada’s wildfire seasons, living matter filled with fungi could one day help clean the air in our homes.
“Could we engineer these mushrooms so that if there’s a lot of smoke from wildfires, they could recognize that—and produce more of these fuzzy fibrous materials to trap this particulate matter?” he speculated.
That’s an idea that’s still largely science fiction, but Lin believes it needs more research.
“In the very long future, these biological tools could give us new ways and new insights to produce materials that are faster, better, cheaper – and in the long term, more ecologically sound,” a he said.
An architectural artist’s rendering of a hypothetical house built using 3D-printed biocomposite materials filled with microscopic networks of fungal mycelium. (Submitted by UBC Biogenic Architecture Lab)
