Mycelium in custom handwoven moulds

Dilara Ozlu (CITA)

Dilara is an architect. She studied her master’s degree in Computation in Architecture at Royal Danish Academy. She is interested in material research for biomaterials and finding the right application technic through computational design tools.

@dilaraozlu

Project Description

The research presented explores mycelium as a new building material and presents research investigating how fibrous woven scaffolds can be used to grow large scale mycelium structures. This living material has potentials to be discovered in many fields as well as in architecture. However, strict application technics currently used in the industry is a challenge for scaling up and geometry explorations. Also, mycelium not always been investigated fully to discover the architectural potentials during its growth, because it is dried during the making process. Most of the early applications found in the literature produces mycelium by placing it inside mass-produced rectangular moulds and, because mycelium is dried afterwards, the natural growth of mycelium in its environment is not investigated. The sterilization protocols used during making is another concern which result as a scaling up problem.

The focus of this research is on growing mycelium in custom handwoven moulds. The weaved moulds are studied with different substrate recipes, fungi species and thread types. Mycelium is kept alive in the later stages to be used on a reforestation capacity - to enrich the biodiversity by increasing the soil quality, filter the water in lakes for healthier water ecosystem, sustaining a healthier forest ecosystem by mycorrhizal relationship, and communication of the plants in the forest. The use of mycelium architecture will not only be better for reforestation results but also the use of mycelium architecture aims a healthier and stronger human-nature relationship by involving people in the making process and educating them about biodiversity, mushrooms, and the role of mushroom in forest ecosystem through making, series of activities taken part in the forests and change in time.