Design, Cultivation and Application of Load-Bearing Mycelium Components

By F. Heisel, Juney Lee, K. Schlesier, M. Rippmann, N. Saeidi, A. Javadian, A. Nugroho, T. Mele, P. Block, D. Hebel. 2017

52 citations recorded by the source corpus.

MycoTree is a spatial branching structure made out of load-bearing mycelium components. Its geometry was designed using 3D graphic statics, utilising compression-only form to enable the weak material to perform structurally. Using only mycelium and bamboo, the structure represents a provocative vision of how one may move beyond the mining of our construction materials from the earth’s crust to their cultivation; how achieving stability through geometry rather than through material strength opens up possibilities to use weaker materials structurally and safely; and ultimately, how newly developed cultivated materials in combination with informed structural design have the potential to propose an alternative to established building materials for a more sustainable construction industry.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5f5b446e98bf503a5aea7fe7e874d3c3ed457a3b