Waste from construction and demolition sites accounts for approximately 15-30% of all landfill content in the United States. According to NASA's estimates, more than 500 million tons of often non-biodegradable building materials containing carcinogens and other toxins are sent off to the junkyard yearly.
Seeking to alleviate some of these environmental consequences of the built environment, Chris Maurer of redhouse studio has created the Biocycler, a mobile machine to be placed at demolition sites in order to recycle waste. Maurer, who previously served as director of the non-profit firm MASS Design Group in Rwanda, has teamed up with both NASA and MIT for the project, which is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to build a working prototype.
The machine, which will collect waste on site, uses living organisms, primarily mushrooms, as binders to form ground up trash materials into bricks. Fungi—Earth's great decomposer—contains mycelium, the vegetative part of mushrooms that exudes enzymes and acids capable of digesting even the most toxic of materials. This fungal mycelium is embedded in deconstruction waste that can then be poured into moulds and grown and dried into a sturdy, building material.
The result is a mushroom brick that is not only cleaner than its synthetic counterparts, but also displays some very attractive material properties. If the environmental pros weren't incentive enough, the brick is incredibly lightweight—light enough to float on water; is soft enough to make an impression with your fingernail yet can still withstand incredible compression and shear forces; and, it also happens to be a powerful heat and sound insulator.
Quite a few players in the architectural field have already begun looking into this breed of alternative materials. Most notably, David Benjamin of the Living used mushroom bricks to build his 2014 installation for MoMA PS1. Arup group, a London-based firm providing consulting services for all aspects of the built environment, has also proposed using everything from mushrooms to banana peels to rice as organic building materials. Maruer's project, however, is unique in proposing the waste come from prior buildings. Already recycling some materials through the numerous adaptive reuse projects his firm takes on, the Kickstarter would allow them, with the mobile unit, to get closer to building entire structures from waste.
4 Comments
Is it edible?
Fantastic idea! There are numerous materials we can use as architects to be more sustainable. I would also recommend checking out the work of Robinson Vega in Ecuador, who is an architect that works in bamboo but primarily has been focusing on creating materials from the agricultural waste of his country, such as building and insulating with banana fibers.
--> https://www.stonecycling.com
Forgot to mention but there's a typo in the title and url: biocylcer
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