Bioengineers turning plants into building material for Oakland housing development and beyond

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Some innovative bioengineers meeting at the California College of the Arts are showing us technologies that can turn something you might normally find on your dinner table into a building material.

If you're building a house on Mars, you might want to consider mushroom roots. And maybe throw a little hemp into the mix for a housing development in Oakland. And why not add in some eggshell bricks, just to round out the recipe?

Just ask Claire Leffler, architecture research fellow at the California College of the Arts, which is joining with several companies to explore the power and possibilities of so-called biomaterials.

"I think we kind of just wanted to show the potential and different boundaries that architecture is starting to break," Leffler said.

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The potential is drawing architects and bioengineers from across the country into the conversation. Chris Maurer's Redhouse Studio uses mycelium, the root system of fungi, to create building materials from plants and organic waste in places like Africa. They're also working with NASA Ames, on a concept that would transport mushroom seed stock to grow structures on a someday Mars space station.

"The plan is to go with an inflatable structure that has an exterior shell of bioreactors that would then fill with water that we can source on Mars or on the moon to be able to make those microorganisms grow so you can take grams of microorganisms and grow them into millions of tons of building materials," explains Maurer.

It's a concept that's also getting off the ground in the Bay Area. Arthur Harsuvanakit is principal research scientist with software design innovator Autodesk. They're working with architects in West Oakland to reduce the carbon footprint of a housing development, by using a mycelium and hemp material for the exterior.

"So our target is to make sustainable net zero buildings, and this system that we've developed with our partners actually reduces the embodied carbon of compared to a typical by 60%," he said. "And so we're lowering the total embodied carbon in the building by 20% just by replacing the skin of the building."

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Across the room, Professor Laia Mogas-Soldevila and her team from the University of Pennsylvania showed us a printed material that can react to everything from UV rays in sunlight to heat.

"So many times, architects are looking to track pathologies in real-time, right? We would be able to see heat exchanges which are not happening where we want them to happen, heat retention, heat leaks, this sort of pathology," Mogas-Soldevila said.

The strategy is essentially crowdsourcing biomaterial dreamers to take on the biggest goals from space stations, to net zero carbon neutral buildings, and staying climate ready.

"The goal of having all building be net zero in the next ten years is pretty lofty, but it feels a lot more possible," Athena Moore with Autodesk Research said.

The bioengineering strategy also works as a strong form of recycling, including plant waste rescued from landfills, and eggshells donated from local restaurants.