Industrial strength fungus: mycelium as building material
I usually try very hard to think up my own headlines when passing on items like this, but sometimes you just have to concede that the one you found can’t be improved upon. So, enter the newest candidate for the ultimate in environmentally-friendly building materials – fungal mycelium [via MetaFilter; image by James Jordan].
Mycelium doesn’t taste very good, but once it’s dried, it has some remarkable properties. It’s nontoxic, fireproof and mold- and water-resistant, and it traps more heat than fiberglass insulation. It’s also stronger, pound for pound, than concrete. In December, Ross completed what is believed to be the first structure made entirely of mushroom. (Sorry, the homes in the fictional Smurf village don’t count.) The 500 bricks he grew at Far West Fungi were so sturdy that he destroyed many a metal file and saw blade in shaping the ’shrooms into an archway 6 ft. (1.8 m) high and 6 ft. wide.
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A promising start-up named Ecovative is building a 10,000-sq.-ft. (about 930 sq m) myco-factory in Green Island, N.Y. “We see this as a whole new material, a woodlike equivalent to plastic,” says CEO Eben Bayer. The three-year-old company has been awarded grants from the EPA and the National Science Foundation, as well as the Department of Agriculture–because its mushrooms feast on empty seed husks from rice or cotton. “You can’t even feed it to animals,” says Bayer of this kind of agricultural waste. “It’s basically trash.”
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Ecovative’s next product, Greensulate, will begin targeting the home-insulation market sometime next year. And according to Bayer’s engineering tests, densely packed mycelium is strong enough to be used in place of wooden beams.
There are so many possible punchlines that I think I’ll leave you to pick your own…
February 5th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
It kinda makes sense — fungus cell walls are made of chitin, which is pretty tough stuff.
February 6th, 2010 at 10:43 am
Oxymoron of the day: Mold-resistant fungi!
February 8th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
this is awesome…what a trip….very hopeful and cool… does it burn? can it be grown in shape a la shaped bamboos?
February 8th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
I must be hallucinating,
either way it sounds very cool.
March 13th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Smaller, more compact, solar oriented, well insulated dwellings will cut capital and running costs for the smaller bodied of the Great Hulking American Neanderthals; spawn of two hundred years of corporate force feeding and breeding for exploitation of Americas resources, now gone! Mushrooms as building material make as much sense as Hemp, another fast to grow, easy to replace material! The huge supply of wood being burned in Detroit Cities ruination has yet to re-grow and the Great hulking American Neanderthal must turn to other building materials – the fine West Coast firs are all gone! Redwoods? same story! The Asian, remaining small in stature and modest in diet of veggies and rice, smaller dwelling spaces, compact economical cars, electric bullet train networks, has a lower operating cost and will surpass the Great Hulking American Neanderthals this way, even with mushroom and hep houses, complete with bamboo and solar heat, with even super insulation, but this is one way to cut costs and keep our heads up for a short while.