Is that building growing?

By changing the materials it uses, the construction industry can cut waste and emissions and reimagine how our buildings interact with nature, writes Alison Boleyn.

COVID-19 may have hitched some temporary tarps over the numbers but the International Energy Agency says buildings and the construction industry contribute nearly 39 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions. Manufacturing cement alone accounts for 7 per cent of them. Add sand and the environmental and geopolitical impacts are even more devastating; sand, despite appearances, is a finite resource. So the construction industry is rethinking the building materials it uses.

One of the most radical trends is a field still in its infancy: living building materials. These are bioengineered construction materials that can grow, self-heal, generate energy and even replicate themselves.

Scientists from the University of Colorado, funded by a branch of the United States Department of Defense, have developed a literally green product in “living concrete” – cubes, arches and shoebox-sized bricks made from photosynthetic bacteria and gelatine that start out a queasy olive before settling into a friendlier shade. There’s still work to do – the bacteria is sensitive to contamination and dies in dry conditions – but cut the “parent” in half and these can double themselves for three generations.

Mogu, an Italian design company that’s become a centre of experimentation in sustainable building materials, has developed exquisite commercial tiles, flooring and acoustic panels by mixing mycelium – the vegetal part of mushrooms – with agro-industrial waste then leaving it to grow. Mogu is also an industrial partner in what’s probably the world’s most ambitious plan for the humble ’shroom. The FUNGAR project, launched by the European Commission, connects computer scientists, biophysicists, architects and mycologists in the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands to collaborate on smart buildings with fungi within their framework. Forests are interlaced with natural mycelium networks that process and exchange information between plants and trees. Mushrooms, which can carry electrical signals and data, act as a sensor in the buildings, detecting changes in light, pollutants and temperature before exchanging that data with a computer.

The US company Biomason, which business information platform Crunchbase calculates has raised US$94.8 million in funding, grows biocement bricks using a wild, non-pathogenic strain of a natural bacteria rather than non-renewable materials. While traditional cement-making burns limestone in furnaces, Biomason’s process absorbs instead of emitting CO2 and Biolith blocks take three days to “grow” in contrast to cement’s customary month. Biomason’s founder and CEO, Ginger Krieg Dosier, plans to remove 25 per cent of concrete emissions by 2030. “We have no intention of slowing down.”