The future of sustainable building materials isn’t just coming—it’s already here, and it’s alive. Last week, the Healthy Materials Lab and The Architectural League of New York hosted a sold-out event, "From Field to Form: Mycelium." This gathering brought together top growers, architects, designers, and scientists to dive into the groundbreaking potential of mycelium—a natural material reshaping industries from construction to fashion.
Major players like Cadillac are already integrating mycelium into their luxury car interiors, while innovative organizations such as NASA are exploring its use for building habitats in space. These collaborations highlight how this humble material is poised to transform how we think about materials—not just as products, but as living, breathing solutions for a more sustainable future.
What is Mycelium?
Mycelium is the root-like structure of fungi. It’s made up of a network of tiny, thread-like fibers that grow underground or within other materials. Think of it as the "body" of a mushroom where the edible part we are familiar with is the fruit and the mycelium are its roots, working quietly beneath the surface to break down organic matter and help plants exchange nutrients.
In practical terms, mycelium acts like nature’s recycler and glue—it can grow into strong, lightweight, and flexible materials. That’s why it's being used in everything from building insulation and bricks to biodegradable packaging, furniture and as a leather substitute. It’s a renewable and sustainable alternative to many traditional materials.
Trailblazers in the Mycelium Revolution
The “From Field to Form: Mycelium" featured several industry leaders pushing the boundaries of design with mycelium. Here are a few highlights:
Mae-ling Lokko, a leader in sustainable innovation from Yale's Center for Ecosystems in Architecture, co-hosted the event with Jonsara Ruth of Parsons’ Healthy Materials Lab. Lokko showcased mycelium’s transformative potential in architecture, including:
Ecovative Design as seen in this installation at Moma PS1 by architect David Benjamin, for which one criterion for the competition was that the materials were to be biodegradable at the end of the summer. Here each of the bricks used to construct it were grown rather than manufactured, using a combination of agricultural byproducts and mushroom mycelium.
BIG - i am mshrm, a 3D-printed mycelium structure by the Danish architecture firm BIG, highlighting mycelium's allure and versatility in design.
The Harris Wang team at Columbia is engineering self-healing, adaptive, and biodegradable mycelium bricks—materials that can communicate and respond to their environment.
The MycoMatters Lab at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte is building entire structures with mycelium and contributing cutting-edge research on its potential as a building technology.
Mycelium vs. Concrete: Strength in Sustainability
Christopher Maurer of redhouse architecture delivered a compelling presentation comparing mycelium blocks to traditional concrete under a "sledgehammer test." While concrete boasts centuries of refinement, the demonstration revealed mycelium’s surprising durability, even in its early stages of development.
With a compression strength of 6 MPa compared to the 13.8–20.7 MPa of standard CMU blocks, mycelium shows remarkable promise for a material still in its infancy. Its potential goes beyond Earth—Maurer is collaborating with NASA to grow building blocks on Mars, offering a sustainable alternative to transporting materials across space. (Explore more of Maurer’s work on the Healthy Materials Lab podcast: Trace Materials, Season 3, Episode 4.)
The Future is Grown, Not Extracted
As illustrated in the examples above, instead of extracting resources required to make concrete such as limestone or iron ore for steel, material scientists and architects are using mycelium and focusing on growing the materials we need. Mycelium offers a versatile and sustainable option for construction, insulation, packaging, and even fabrics and furniture. Mycelium thrives on waste materials like agricultural waste, promoting a closed-loop circular economy-based system in construction that reduces environmental impact.
What’s Next for Mycelium?
Katy, who has helped lead efforts at Google to eliminate plastic and create paper-based packaging across industries, is also exploring mycelium. This innovative material holds immense potential for revolutionizing upstream packaging in Katy’s interior architecture and design practice:
Product Packaging: Interior design products, such as furniture, lighting, and decor items, can be packaged in mycelium-based containers. This reduces plastic waste and offers a more eco-friendly solution to the global transportation of products.
Protective Packaging: Fragile items, like glass or ceramic pieces, can be protected with mycelium-based cushioning, providing a sustainable alternative to traditional foam or bubble wrap.
In Ambar’s design practice at Spacesmith she’s envisioning a future where architecture and interiors are not only inspired by nature but quite literally grown from it. She’s already witnessing remarkable strides in mycelium-based materials, such as Italian manufacturer Mogu’s elegant, high-performance acoustic panels and MycoWorks' collaboration with Cadillac, which introduced luxurious, sustainable mycelium "leather" for car interiors. These innovations underscore the commercial viability and aesthetic potential of mycelium as a construction and decorative material.
It’s not hard to imagine a near future where gypsum board panel replacements are grown from mycelium, walls are insulated with its fibrous network, and decorative surfaces breathe life into our spaces, telling a story of sustainability and ingenuity. This isn’t just a dream—it’s a challenge to embrace and shape the future of design with materials that grow, evolve, and eventually return to the earth.