Archinect - News

NASA tests growing fungi habitats in outer space

2024-06-27T17:52:00-04:00

A team of engineers from the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley has secured funding for their innovative Mycotecture Off Planet project. The initiative hopes to construct off-planet sustainable housing and furniture designs from mycelial composite bricks.

The $2 million in funding will help the team's development towards a potential future demonstration mission in advance of the Artemis Moon/Mars exploration program, which is being hailed as an important "stepping stone."

A NASA press release stressed its ability to be transferred over for additional use as a building material for structures on Earth, adding that its long-term prospects rely on "science and technology that doesn’t yet exist." Habitations would be grown on the lunar surface using water to a lightweight support material containing dormant fungi.

"Mycotecture Off Planet exemplifies how advanced...

Researchers debut mycelium glamping cabin prototype

2024-05-06T17:04:00-04:00

A new experimental demonstration glamping concept that represents likely the first building project made using mycelium in the Czech Republic has debuted from the home reconstruction financier Buřinka with a cross-disciplinary team from Mykilio and the Czech Technical University called MYMO.

Rendering courtesy Buřinka and MYMO

The SAMOROST concept is the latest example of sustainable construction using mushroom-based compounds as an alternative material to insulate external walls, roofs, and floors, as well as other non-load-bearing components. The cabins were designed using special proprietary mycocomposite, which they claim has been proven in lab testing over the past two years to have suitable qualities for residential structures. The experiment sought to improve usability for campers and is being pursued with support from the country’s Minister of the Environment, Petr Hladík.

Rendering courtesy Buřinka and MYMO

Design author Tomasz Kloza, a final year Master's in architecture and...

400 hanging mushroom bricks used in Studio Link-Arc’s Shenzhen Biennale installation

2023-03-22T11:27:00-04:00

New York City firm Studio Link-Arc has created an installation in Shenzhen formed from 400 hanging mushroom bricks. Titled 'Mushroom Brick Pyramids,' the project was created for the 2022 Shenzhen Biennale, which adopted the theme ‘More than Human Adventure.’

Photo credit: Yu Bai

Seeking to respond to the theme with a project that explored “the intersection between living organisms and architecture,” the studio chose mycelia as their working material due to its ability to survive and adapt to varying environments. As a result, the installation aimed to reflect, visualize, and learn from the organisms in order to inform future architectural applications of the material.

Photo credit: Yu Bai

The resulting scheme was set within a converted old brewery, which included a gallery space between the continuous concrete frames. Beneath the 400 hanging mushroom bricks, a pool was created to provide a moist microclimate, while the indoor-outdoor nature of the space allowed for additional moisture...

Researchers have found ways to use mushrooms to decarbonize construction waste

2022-10-21T14:59:00-04:00

Megadeveloper Lendlease is one of the entities behind a new study into the use of mushrooms as a means of decarbonizing construction waste through their application on discarded asphalt roofing shingles.

The company teamed with Rubicon Technologies, Mycocycle, and Rockwood Sustainable Solutions to complete a pilot project at the latter’s facility in Lebanon, Tennessee.

Image courtesy Mycocycle

Shingles removed from a total of 214 homes following a recent re-roofing project at the U.S. Army’s Fort Campbell installation in nearby Kentucky were then broken down thanks to an infused mix of three different strains of fungi in a process called mycoremediation.

"Every asphalt shingle from those 214 homes would have gone to a landfill," Sara Neff, Head of Sustainability at Lendlease Americas, said of the 11 to 13 million tons of the product the EPA estimates winds up in landfills annually.

Image courtesy Mycocycle

"There was simply no viable use for them," she continued. "We understand the i...

Mushrooms hold the key for this year’s winning proposal at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale in Estonia

2021-10-12T14:18:00-04:00

A trippy trend in building technology has taken top billing at the 6th annual Tallinn Architecture Biennale in the Baltic nation of Estonia.

Using 3D-printing technology, the Australian team of Simulaa and Natalie Alima has taken a timber-frame formwork imbued with mycelial fibers that grow to envelop the structure, allowing it to decay along an algorithmic process that, in fitting with the competition’s mandate, biologically expresses the slow passage of time.

With the Biennale’s theme being “Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism,” the concept offers a very wavy way of considering how materials and methods can be better used to help buildings adapt to local environments through projects that “take a long, romantic and human-centric view towards construction technology.”

“This project curates an ...

New research study indicates chitin could be a suitable building material for Mars habitation

2020-09-30T13:08:00-04:00

A study conducted by Javier Fernandez and colleagues from Singapore University of Technology and Design provides research that the bioinspired material, chitin, would be a viable building material for Mars inhabitation and tool production.

Fernandez shares with Universe Today that by reverse-engineering chitin production and combining it with an analog of Martian soil, new chitinous material was created. This material called biolith has presented itself to be highly useful in creating rigid structures using minimal energy output.

“The technology was originally developed to create circular ecosystems in urban environments, but due to its efficiency, it is also the most efficient and scalable method to produce materials in a closed artificial ecosystem in the extremely scarce environment of a lifeless planet or satellite,” explains Fernandez.

Powering Mumbai with Magic Mushrooms

2012-07-18T14:52:00-04:00

... a cache of biological samples appeared through the criminal networks of Mumbai, in the vain hope that it might provide new marketable narcotic opportunities. The collective drive and expertise of the refugees managed to turn theses genetically-engineered fungal samples into a new type of infrastructure - providing heat, light and building material for the refugees. Dharavi rapidly evolved it's own micro-economy based around the mushrooms.