Wednesday 21 June 2017

fungus among us

Though not quite the confectionary house of the witch that lured inside Hansel and Gretel, a very clever student at London’s Brunel University (named for the famed architect and civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel) is developing a construction medium that fruits from edible mushrooms. The stringy, root-like mycelium is mixed with cardboard as a filler and then left to grow to form a pretty robust frame. The student envisions future bottom-up, pop-up kiosks and food booths serving dishes plucked off the walls. Apparently mycelium has already been field-tested and there is a precedent for these “mushroom sausages” as building elements with bio-bricks and other experiments that one can learn more about at the link above.