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How mushroom architecture is being used to address Cleveland's housing crisis

2018-07-09T17:53:00-04:00

Inspired by the work of inventor Philip Ross and his company MycoWorks, Maurer argues that one of the keys to addressing Cleveland’s housing crisis lies in an unlikely source: mushrooms. Specifically, in using mycelium – the vegetative part of a fungus – and Cleveland’s other “natural” resource, construction waste, in a process called “biocycling”, which essentially recycles old buildings into new ones using plant materials.

“I like to refer to Cleveland as ‘ground zero’ for biocycling,” says Maurer, who believes the city has the perfect conditions and challenges to serve as a prototype for the process.

Cleveland architect Christopher Maurer of Redhouse Studio argues how mycotecture (architecture that uses mushrooms and fungi) and “biocycling” can be used to help solve his hometown's dire housing challenges, and how these methods will hopefully become a model of sustainable construction in cities everywhere.

Exchanging cinderblock for 'shrooms with "fungi bricks"

2017-05-30T12:48:00-04:00

To most people, mushrooms are a food source. To mycologist (mushroom scientist) Philip Ross, fungi are much, much more. In fact, Ross is most passionate about mushrooms’ ability to be used for building materials and it is this is what he primarily focuses his attention on. Recently, the mycologists figured out how to make bricks from growing fungi that are super-strong and water-, mold- and fire resistant.

Referred to as "mycotecture," the mushroom bricks originally were embraced by the art world, but increasingly are being considered for other structural uses.

Stronger and cooler-looking than concrete, the above fungi-brick structure is held together using chopsticks.

OMA's glass mushroom: the Lucas Museum that could have been

2016-07-12T13:07:00-04:00

Designed by architect Shohei Shigematsu of Rem Koolhaas' OMA practice, the striking glass building was a losing entrant in George Lucas' 2014 competition to design his museum. Now that legal wrangling over the use of the lakefront site between Soldier Field and McCormick Place has prompted Lucas to definitively rule out Chicago as the home of his project, OMA has released the images for Chicagoans to further ponder what might have been.

The much-bedraggled path to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, with MAD Architects designing its tent-like expanse, has yet to find its home—facing lawsuits and design criticisms in Chicago, it could move to Waukegan, Illinois, or Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay. At least we get to see some juicy rejects in the meantime, like this one from OMA, which Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin concedes "almost makes Jabba the Hutt's palace look OK."

Justifying their top-heavy design, OMA said in a press release that it would create canopied park space, and let the museum "contain eight times the public space it occupies". Perhaps in a galaxy far, far away.

Update (7/13): Brooklyn Digital Foundry put together this video for OMA, presenting their design for the Lucas Museum.

Archinect - News

How mushroom architecture is being used to address Cleveland's housing crisis​

Exchanging cinderblock for 'shrooms with "fungi bricks"

OMA's glass mushroom: the Lucas Museum that could have been

How mushroom architecture is being used to address Cleveland's housing crisis