With technology evolving at rapid speed, more and more possibilities arise to make the materials we build with actually bio-friendly. However, with that arise questions about how those new materials fit into our way of designing. Perhaps it's us that need to change.
With a steadily and rapidly growing population comes an equally rapidly growing wish for construction. More and more people needing a home makes for a huge production of building materials that unfortunately do harm the environment. More often than not the materials we use in our buildings cast out an enormous amount of co2 into the atmosphere. And if the production of the product itself isn’t as harmful as other materials, it is the products that protect the materials from wearing off that do the damage. Environmental friendly designing feels a bit daunting, feeling like everything you do is just the lesser of two evils. However, In recent years the evolution of biofriendly materials has given life to some very interesting ideas – maybe even solutions to this problem. One that seems to be promising to the architectural world is the use of fungal biofabrication. Already you see temporary pavilions pop up made out of mycelium bricks, like the Hy-Fi Tower that was on display in 2014 in New York. One thing about fungi that would make it such an interesting solution is that we as designers would have to adapt to the material. Because it is a living organism with spectacular features, we would have to consider co-designing the buildings with the fungi itself. The building itself would work as a living organism, with intelligence, adaptability, and even decay. It would challenge our perception on authorship and on the permanence of architecture.
Figure 1: Hy-Fi tower in New York made from mycelium bricks. From Holmic Foundation https://www.holcimfoundation.org/projects/hy-fi
The fungi works as an intelligent co-creator, as the way it functions and thrives is through a lot of communication. Networks of mycelium are completely decentralized, meaning that they grow as they go. There is not a specific point within the network that functions like a brain, but rather each ‘end’ of the fungi is capable of making its own decision based on the problem it is facing. It ‘speaks’ with the entire network on what to do and is even capable of learning about its environment based on the chemicals it encounters. Each tip has the autonomy to make its own decisions in order to keep the whole informed. Fungi don’t have a nervous system, but do work in a similar manner. Because of this, fungi are great when it comes to pathfinding. We often use algorithms to determine the best or shortest route from A to B, but fungi are capable of doing this on their own. There are no limitations when it comes to the shape and size of the structures mycelium can build into. One way to use this within architectural design is to demarcate the borders of the design and let the mycelium find their path within. The building grows in a way that mycelium considers is best.
Having a living organism be both your material and your colleague would be a shift within the design world. We would be shifting from the idea of extracting your materials to collaborating with materials. With this comes the ethical question of using living organisms within your design. To what extent is it ethically speaking okay to use a living, functioning and even ‘speaking’ being in your building. Can you actually force the fungi to grow in a certain way? And could you keep it alive to have its only purpose be to keep the building standing? If the answer to any of these questions is no, would you still consider using the fungi considering it is a way more environmentally friendly material than most other products used in architecture? It is important to ask ourselves these questions when considering fungi as a living material.
The possibility of a structure not being permanent at all is another idea that designers would have to shift to. If a living organism doesn’t get the nutrients it needs to survive, it will die and decompose. The tips of the fungi that work as pathfinders make decisions based on how to survive. If eventually the structure is functional as a building, the pathfinders can get ordered to stop growing by the architect and the fungi might get deprived of those nutrients. The building not being permanent is in its own way beautiful. As the mycelium breaks down into biodegradable waste, it can feed another network of fungi as biodegradable waste has exactly the nutrients that fungi need to grow. By dying, the decomposition of the building regenerates the growth of a new one.
Introducing fungal biofabrication into the architectural world is not just a matter of new materials, but it introduces an entirely new way of thinking. An architectural model that focuses on adaptability and symbiotic relationships of the building itself with the environment. Would designers be able to accept that their projects live, grow and die in their own time?
