Our research interest is the development of regenerative biological materials for construction. We use mycelium, the root network of fungi, to develop new materials which can be produced through 100% biological processes.

After years of fundamental research on mycelium-based materials, we have completed a number of projects and constructions which prove the material suitable for building. For the project MycoTree, a self-supporting spatial structure, bricks of mycelium were used for load-bearing components. MycoTree has been developed in collaboration with the Block Research Group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich.

We work for example with spores of pearl oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus Ostreatus) or Reishi mushrooms (Ganoderma Lucidum).

Doing research on mushroom mycelium is particularly interesting for us because we regard it as a potential biological substitute for concrete. Naturally grown mushroom mycelium can be used as binding material for biological substrates, just as concrete serves as binding material for sand and gravel.

Global economic and ecological developments will very much depend on where the resources for this future wealth will come from. As our mines are running dry and CO2-emissions reach alarming heights, all economic branches will have to adapt to radically new conditions. Currently, our natural resources are mined from the earth and disposed of in a linear process. This approach has dramatic consequences for our planet, which will only become more severe with time, unless a circular economic process can be implemented. The goal of our mushroom research is to establish biological cycles within the construction industry.

There is a myriad of variables that influence the growing process and define the materials characteristics depending on the intended use.

Mushrooms have been used all over the world and since the beginning of human history, for example in food or poisons. In construction, they usually have a bad reputation as vermin, destroying wood or other material.

Using mycelium, the root network of mushrooms, to cultivate building material is a comparatively new method. There is still a lot of work to be done, in order to promote the material and set it apart from destructive species of mushrooms.

The global population grows by 2.47 people every second, and all of them have the goal and the right to a life in dignity and their share of happiness and wealth. At the same time, the natural resources we have been using in order to reach these goals are running out. We know the warnings about low provisions of sand, zinc, copper and rare soils from the daily news, and these are only the first signs of the dramatic scarcities, future generations will be facing. The answers lie in new resources, economic models and alternative sources of energy. Understanding and recognizing urban mines, cultivated construction material and circular models are central concerns. Both, teaching and research, conducted at the Faculty for Sustainable Construction, are informed by the firm belief that academia has a central part to play in order to inform and encourage future generations to meet these enormous challenges. Besides ecological, economic and social-ethical questions, aesthetic aspects are an important concern in our discipline: only things that are breathtakingly beautiful will be sustained, cultivated and valued for long periods of time.

• The website of the Faculty for Sustainable Construction provides further information on our research and teaching: www.nb.ieb.kit.edu

• For the project „Urban Mining and Recycling“ (UMAR), an apartment for PhD-candidates in the NEST building of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa), part of the apartment has been insulated with mycelium-based tiles.: www.nest-umar.net

• Further reading:
  Cultivated buildings materials: industrialized natural resources for architecture and construction
  Dirk E. Hebel und Felix Heisel, Birkhäuser Berlin and Basel 2017