Student creates zero-waste architecture with mushroom sausages
Aleksi Vesaluoma, a student from Brunel University London, has been exploring how mushrooms can be incorporated into the architecture world, by growing zero-waste structures – an eco-friendly alternative to traditional architecture techniques.
Vesaluoma managed to develop an ecological, fungi-based building material that is shaped into long tubes and cultivated into structural forms, according to Tree Hugger. In collaboration with London architecture firm Astudio, the student used a technique where cardboard is mixed with mycelium (the part of the mushroom that branches out like thread-like extensions) and thus created “mushroom sausages”. These “sausages” were created using cotton bandages, hung over a mold and let to grow for a month in a ventilated greenhouse. As they grow, the structure’s tube “bound together like glue”. Furthermore, the gourmet mushrooms that grow from the structure can be picked and eaten.
The student envisions the material being used as a base for a pop-up restaurant grown from mushrooms that serves mushroom-based meals, according to Dezeen. “Exploring the structural potentials of mycelium materials could help in shaping a future where architecture is grown from bottom-up rather than consuming resources and creating waste,” he said. Mycelium materials are beneficial to us and the environment as well as just being really cool. They’re another great example of why we need to trust the intelligence of nature in helping us create more regenerative systems of manufacture.
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A number of designers are also working with mycelium. However, Vesaluoma’s approach adds something new, as it allows enhancing the structure’s strength, reshaping into different designs or building on a smaller scale, as Phys reports.
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