Cleveland needs new housing. Demand for safe, affordable housing is outstripping supply, according to city reports.
As Cleveland considers its options, local architect Chris Maurer is developing a novel idea for what could serve as a new building block for that housing and a medium for growing food at the same time.
"It just seemed like a no-brainer that these two things should really be put together," Maurer said. "We can develop a vertically integrated process where people can have food and housing in the same process."
The crowd at Red House Studio, Maurer's workshop on the east side of Cleveland, is usually fairly small with Maurer, his two sons, and occasionally their dog Riley, working in the space.
But on this warm May day, the studio is filled with attendees at one of several workshops where they can craft teddy bears, footballs and flowerpots.
"We're going to harvest these mushrooms," Maurer said to attendees. "We're going set them aside. I'll put them up on the shelf. They'll dry out like that, and I'll turn them into teas later.
The material is not anything traditional like clay, But a soft, sandy substance derived from mushrooms.
"We're going to play around with the mycelium, which is this byproduct from the mushroom cultivation," Maurer said as he prepares to begin his demonstration.
Maurer grows mushrooms from construction and demolition waste – sawdust in this case – that's combined with mycelium.
"The mycelium is basically the root-like branching hyphae of the fungal organism," Maurer said. "What that's gonna do is just interweave in between all of those particles and create ... a dense matrix of both fungi and plant together."
In other words: building blocks for new housing.
While the mycelium navigates its way through the waste material, it breaks down contaminants like heavy metals, Maurer said. After about a month, it sprouts reishi mushrooms that are safe for humans to consume.
The substrate that remains would typically be disposed of, but Maurer saves it for a process he calls biocycling.
"We define it as using fungi to shape the built environment," Maurer said.
From substrate to the built environment
For workshop participants, their final products, once removed from the molds, are spongy and soft to the touch.
But biocycling doesn’t have to end with flowerpots and footballs.
"We put it through a manufacturing process that compacts and heats it and turns it into a brick that's very similar to the strength of concrete or wood," Maurer said. "We put it into an oven to dry it out all the away. And that's when it becomes the robust building materials that we can build with."
Maurer's goal is to bring sustainable, mycelium-based homes to Cleveland where much of the city’s remaining housing stock is estimated to be at least 80 years old, according to the city’s planning commission.
The age of the homes presents the possibility of exposure to lead-based paints, which can be dangerous or even deadly for residents with young kids if not properly remediated.
But mycelium-based architecture, which Maurer calls mycotecture may be able turn demolished, contaminated homes into safe building material.
"Here in Cleveland what we want to do is recycle that material, but also remediate as we recycle," he said.
And, shifting to biocycled bricks, could greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A ton of carbon dioxide is emitted for each ton of concrete produced, Maurer said, and that number doubles for steel production.
"If we were to build even a small portion of the building that we need to do by mid-century, using these materials, we could turn the dial backwards on carbon emissions."
Far beyond Cleveland
Maurer spent time in Africa developing the science of mycotecture before coming home to Cleveland.
In Namibia, Maurer created mycelium bricks using an invasive, encroacher bush as the waste material.
"We took 12 tons of this environmentally problematic encroacher bush, converted that into fodder for growing mushrooms [and] we grew mushrooms on that," Maurer said. "They went to market to feed people, and then we turned that [byproduct] into 925 of these cubic foot blocks that are structural and insulative at the same time."
Alongside MIT, Maurer used the bricks to create the MycoHAB: the world's first mycelium-based structure, completed last year.
"It's a very comfortable building. It's very accessible building," Maurer said. "The environment that you get within that, you know, being insulative and structural and being made of these organic materials, is something that most people are attracted to."
The concept even attracted the eyes of NASA scientists, Maurer said. Since returning to Cleveland, he's been working with NASA to explore the ways mycelium-based architecture can be used to bring housing to the moon and Mars.
"NASA loves it because firstly, we can save potentially trillions of dollars in transport cost because we can grow materials on the moon and Mars instead of having to ship them," Maurer said. "The other benefit is it's amongst, or maybe even the best, radiation shields that we know of right now, and that's kind of the showstopper for space missions."
Mycotecture in Cleveland
Maurer's first use of biocycled material in Cleveland is already a few years old. In 2020, he partnered with Re:Source Cleveland to build a bee barn in Ohio City using mycotecture to create the structure's insulation.
"It's what we consider the world's first biocycled structure because it uses that concept of recycling and remediating [construction and demolition] waste, in the form of a new and healthy building," Maurer said.
While the science behind mycotecture as a tool for remediation is still being studied, Maurer is working with local advocates, including one artist, to convert a lead-paint contaminated home into a biocycled art installation by the end of the summer.
Malena Grigoli is a designer whose work is driven by the life cycles of structures. That focus area inspired her work with Maurer's mycotecture projects.
"Using demo waste as the waste material in this process was a possibility that hadn't yet fully come into fruition, but in my eyes was the most interesting and locally relevant aspect of Chris's work through Red House," Grigoli said, "especially considering Cleveland's post-industrial landscape and deteriorating housing stock."
In the meantime, Maurer said he hopes to promote the science behind biocycling and the eco-friendly ways mushrooms can reshape our built environment.
