Could Fungus Mycelia be The Renewable Resource of the Future?
By Daniel Steelquist

Imagine if you will, a world where you could rapidly cultivate material resources, from chairs, to bricks, or even buildings- highly resilient to impact, fire, flood, time, — even famine. A world where alternatives to styrofoam and plastic can biodegrade as needed within a matter of months, helping the environment as they do — could it be possible to create such materials out of organic matter, even eliminating the need for petrol-based products altogether?  When Phil Ross started imagining his particular process, he described his work as ‘MycoTecture’, integrating Mycology and Architecture to utilize the potentials of the medium, particularly when applied to sustainable design.
Businesses like Ross’ MycoWorks just may have made that world one step closer to reality by literally growing all of these things, and more — out of fungus. The artist/designer/inventor/professor figured out one way to utilize fungal growth by forming bricks out of inoculated agricultural waste, and cultivating their mass to be completely taken over by the fungus, or rather, it’s mycelia.
Mycelium, as we see active in our current experiment, is often referred to as the root systems of mycorrhizal fungi. The often frail, web-like systems can span over large areas of sub-forest floor, decomposing raw materials such as wood and detritus to create more fertile soil for future generations of plant life, catalysing life cycles of entire ecosystems, but also acting as almost a neural networking of the life therein. But what if we could isolate and harness these vast, tightly knit networks at their peak mass, rendering highly versatile composites, all the while even negating a carbon footprint?
By utilizing the rapid decomposition and growth rates of these vegetative bodies, what started as a venture into design has developed into a promising business endeavor – cultivating durable materials for commercial and industrial use by literally baking these custom-formed biomasses into bricks from the brink of fungal fruition.

Ross’s process starts by harvesting mushroom samples; Reishi, a shelf fungus primarily composed of mycelium, has proven to be highly resilient and an ideal candidate for cultivating durable biomaterials. A spore bearing portion of the fruiting body is placed in an agar-filled Petri dish to allow new mycelium to grow outward and continue to be able to propagate. The chunk of Reishi is then added to, in most cases, sealed containers of rye wheat, rich in glucose, on which the mycelium feeds, greatly expanding in surface area, priming itself for further inoculation, en masse.
Though MycoWorks have even advocated incorporating other sugars and proteins to this mix, common things such as licorice, cat food, and other agricultural waste (such as corn husks, or wood shavings). Apparently even some energy drinks are beneficial to the growth of the mycelia throughout the nutritional matrix. [1]
Once this mixture is obtained and pressed into forming blocks, it is left to fill out further, with all the new, rich, substrate. Over the course of usually a week, the entire mass of the new block is consumed, creating a dense, myceliated matrix, with thick outer-cellular walls.
If left uncooked, blocks left in contact will fuse together via continued mycelial growth, eliminating the need for any mortar or binding agent in the assembly of structures. Furthermore, the bricks would soon reach their fruiting stage, also ensuring their eventual biodegradation.
In order to render the mycelial growth inert, the mycelium brick is baked for a short period, developing a resiliency stronger than concrete, far less brittle, and, if necessary, biodegradable.
In a study conducted by Ross and other professors of mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley [2], the stress/strain response of a similarly concocted mycelial composite proved comparable to other foam-like matrices, given the amount of moisture retained in the myceliated substrate.

But MycoWorks isn’t the only band of folk pioneering on the fungi frontier. Phil’s work seems to have inspired, (or have at least been concurrently realized by) the like-minded, in a surge of innovation exploring the applications of such a promising sustainable resource. In fact, much of the work we see in the field today is based on the extensive research of Paul Stamets, who over the past few decades, has laid the groundwork for generations of mycologists through works like Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms can Save the World [4], and others.
Studio Murmur [5], an industrial design firm based out of Chicago, has open-sourced their research on reinforced mycelial composite materials, incorporating meshes of varying material, building further on many of the principle techniques demonstrated by Ross.
Another big player out of New York, Ecovative, is operating by similar means, even offering facilitative kits of dehydrated inoculate, primed for whatever uses can be dreamed up by burgeoning mycologists, which speaks to one of the most encouraging aspects of this process: the nature in which these companies seem to encourage crowd-sourced development of the tech.
Though some patents are pending, the utilization of mycelium as a composite material can be replicated in small scale, DIY settings, making it far more accessible than most petroleum-based manufacturing.

With the grassroots success of today’s Makers movement, we’re starting to see rapid innovations in the development of localized manufacturing techniques, downsizing the process to be accessible by anyone with the time and means. With public access to an easily renewable, biodegradable medium, the populous could see a localized solution to decentralizing the need for sustainable building materials, among other things. By harvesting endemic bio-waste and creating customized inoculate to meet varying demands, we could see even localized environmental rehabilitation[6], essential in the face of climate change, through cost-effective construction techniques actually beneficial to the environment. All we may need to do is look a little deeper within our own backyards.

[1] http://www.mycoworks.com/

[2]http://www.mycoworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/UC-Berkeley-Mycology-Matrix-Composites-ASC-Conference-Paper-13-May-2013-2.pdf

[3] McCoy, P. Radical mycology: a treatise on seeing & working with fungi. (Chthaeus Press, 2016).
Mycelium: The Plastic of the Future, Now p. 328

[4] Stamets, P. Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World; Ten Speed Press: Berkeley, CA, 2005.

Klarenbeek E. Watch “Living Design for Local Production | Eric Klarenbeek | TEDxMaastricht” Video at TEDxTalks. TEDxTalks [Internet]. 2014 Oct 21 [cited 2016 May 17]. Available from: http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/living-design-for-local-product

http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:818790/FULLTEXT01.pdf

[5] http://www.studiomurmur.net/blog/2014/8/13/material-research-mycelium

[6] Phiriyaphongsak, W. mycoFARMX_Living Architecture. Issuu at <https://issuu.com/mycofarmx/docs/mycofarmx>

http://www.iaacblog.com/programs/mycotecture-building-from-mushrooms-2/

https://curve.carleton.ca/system/files/etd/df91b36d-bbf3-4e19-bcdd-6364f8444eef/etd_pdf/ae5e761461b785c8256e03b9cbef54f8/karimjee-biodegradablearchitecturefiniteconstruction.pdf