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Architecture has always been a negotiation with decay. Concrete cracks, steel corrodes, wood warps and dries. Every building begins aging the moment it is born, and a vast global industry exists simply to slow the inevitable. But in research labs scattered across Europe and the United States, a very different vision of architecture is taking shape, not one that resists nature, but one that grows from it. In this vision, buildings are not inert structures. They are alive.
The idea sounds like science fiction: walls that heal themselves, insulation that grows from agricultural waste, building blocks that quietly absorb carbon as they sit in the sun. But this is the frontier scientists are now exploring through mycelium, the branching, subterranean network of fungal life that underlies forests and soil. Long overlooked outside of ecology, mycelium has emerged as an unlikely protagonist in the future of sustainable construction.
At the center of this movement is the EU-funded Fungateria project, an initiative blending biology, engineering, and architecture. The project explores how engineered living materials, formed by combining fungal mycelia with bacteria, can transform the way structures are built, maintained, and even conceptualized. In traditional construction, durability is achieved through resistance. Fungateria’s researchers imagine the opposite: resilience through regeneration.
In their vision, a crack is not a problem to be patched but a stimulus that triggers mycelial growth, closing the fissure like a healing wound. Moisture is not a threat but a signal that prompts a shift in density or composition. The material breathes, shifts, and responds, coded by biology rather than machines.
The process begins with agricultural waste, straw, corn stalks, or sawdust, mixed with fungal spores. As the mycelium grows, it binds the particles into a light, foam-like composite. When dried, it becomes rigid and surprisingly strong. By adjusting temperature, humidity, or nutrient flow, researchers can coax the material into different forms: flexible sheets, sculptural blocks, dense insulation. The waste that once rotted in fields becomes the skeleton of a future structure.
But mycelium alone was not enough. To create a material that could truly heal, scientists turned to bacteria, specifically Sporosarcina pasteurii, known for its ability to produce calcium carbonate, the mineral that gives limestone and coral their strength. In a 2025 study published in Cell Reports Physical Science, researchers grew the fungus Neurospora crassa alongside the bacteria, forming what they called a living building material. The bacteria mineralized the fungal scaffold, reinforcing it from within. Remarkably, they remained alive for at least a month after the material formed, suggesting the possibility of ongoing repair and adaptation.
This interplay between fungus and bacteria, two kingdoms of life collaborating to form a building, challenges the basic premise of construction. Instead of mixing inert ingredients, scientists are designing ecosystems. They are choreographing growth, orchestrating chemical reactions, and embedding intelligence into matter that traditionally has none.
These ideas have already surfaced in full-scale prototypes. One of the most visible is the Hy-Fi Tower, a temporary installation in New York made from mycelium bricks. The tower’s warm, organic walls stood in stark contrast to the glass and steel skyline surrounding it, offering a glimpse of what architecture could look like if it embraced biological materials rather than industrial ones. The structure did not pretend to be permanent; its beauty lay in the fact that, unlike concrete, it could return harmlessly to the earth.
Yet mycelium composites face real limitations. Their structural strength remains modest compared to concrete or steel. They excel in insulation, acoustics, and lightweight applications, but they cannot yet support the loads demanded by multi-story buildings. Moisture, a condition that encourages fungal growth, must be carefully controlled to avoid unintended expansion or decay. And building codes, grounded in centuries of mineral-based materials, have no provisions for living walls or self-repairing panels.
Despite this, the environmental case is compelling. Concrete alone accounts for roughly 8 percent of global carbon emissions. Every year, billions of tons of sand and limestone are extracted to feed construction’s appetite. Mycelium-based materials, by contrast, sequester carbon, feed on waste, and require minimal energy to produce. They echo natural cycles rather than disrupt them.
The concept of “living architecture” also taps into a deeper cultural shift. As climate change accelerates, the idea of dominating nature appears increasingly untenable. Architects and scientists are exploring models inspired by ecosystems, asking what it means to build structures that participate in their environment instead of resisting it. Mycelium, with its instinct for growth and repair, offers one answer.
There is something quietly radical in imagining a building as a partner rather than a possession. Something poetic in the idea of walls that carry the memory of forests, or insulation made from the remnants of last year’s harvest. Something humbling in letting life itself do the work of construction.
Still, questions linger. How long can these materials endure? Can they be scaled economically? Will people feel comfortable living inside walls that once expanded and breathed? The transition from laboratory to cityscape requires not only scientific breakthroughs but cultural acceptance.
Yet the momentum is undeniable. Universities are establishing mycelium-based design labs. Startups are crafting furniture, packaging, and textiles from fungal composites. Architects are sketching blueprints that treat biology as both medium and collaborator. And each new experiment, each crack that closes, each block that strengthens as it grows, brings the field closer to a new architectural paradigm.
The most intriguing possibility lies not in replacing concrete outright, but in expanding the language of what buildings can be. There may be spaces where living materials, with their soft intelligence, create environmental responses no mechanical system could replicate. In an era demanding resilience, adaptability, and sustainability, mycelium may offer more than novelty. It may offer a blueprint for coexistence.
The rise of living materials is not a rejection of architecture’s past but an extension of its future, a recognition that the boundaries between the built environment and the natural world are thinner than once believed. And in the quiet branching of fungal threads, the future of construction may already be taking root.
