Mushrooms Hold Potential for Sustainable Building Materials

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/36471-mushrooms-hold-potential-for-sustainable-building-materials

We slice them on pizza, toss them in salad and sauté them in stirfry. But have you ever thought about using mushrooms as furniture? According to the work of a team of researchers, the humble fungus is ready to leave the kitchen and take up a role as a building material.

In an innovative design project, six new stylish benches have been installed outside the UBC Bookstore. Assembled from light-coloured honeycomb-shaped bricks under a top of clear acrylic, the seats are more than an eye-catching spot where students can relax—they're also very much alive, grown from a blend of oyster mushroom spores and alder sawdust packed into moulds.

The roots of the project stretch back to 2014, when assistant professor at UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture Joe Dahmen and his partner in work and life, Amber Frid-Jimenez, Canada Research Chair in Design and Technology at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, were expecting their second child. They had been working on an architectural installation fabricated of recycled polystyrene blocks—not exactly the most benign material —when they decided to explore more eco-friendly options.

"Amber couldn't get near the thing because it was so toxic," Dahmen recalled, touring the greenhouse where the benches were grown. "It got me thinking that there must be a more natural material that would still enable a similar range of expression."

In their search for an alternative, Dahmen and Frid-Jimenez discovered the world of mycelium biocomposites, an emerging field in which mushroom roots, or mycelium, grow in loose cellulosic material such as sawdust. The results are durable materials with attributes similar to that of polystyrene foams. Although a U.S. company recently signed a contract to provide Ikea with mycelium-based packaging, the method had yet to be done in Canada.