This Mushroom Building Purifies The Air As It Grows

By John Vibes / Truth Theory

A creative organization called “Company New Heroes” and the biotechnology company “Krown Design,” have teamed up to create an incredible building made of mushrooms, which they call the “The Growing Pavillion.”

The structure was built for Dutch Design Week, and was created entirely out of materials that grow on earth, including timber and mycelium.

Krown Design says that the team who built the structure filled molds with a hemp waste substrate where mycelium was placed to grow. In just four days time, the mycelium is able to grow enough to fill in the mold, at which point it is dried by heat so it stops growing.

Company New Heroes creator Diana van Bokhoven said that this structure can clean the air as well.

“Social challenges such as climate change, subsidence, CO2 emissions, and the scarcity of fossil fuels require new, sustainable solutions. The call for a more biobased and circular economy is becoming increasingly necessary,” Diana van Bokhoven said.

Dutch Design Week is attended by more than 75,000 people from a variety of different professions and backgrounds, including government figures, many of whom were able to get an up-close look at the revolutionary design.

Bokhoven pointed to the unsustainability of traditional building materials like concrete, which is responsible for a high level of emissions, and is actually a limited resource that is quickly diminishing in supply, so sustainable alternatives are going to become extremely important in the years to come.

“For now, good materials alone are not enough to make large-scale applications possible. Think about scaling up production, appropriate regulations, innovative designers, and conscious consumers. With The Growing Pavillion and through this atlas, we put this conversation on the world’s agenda and facilitate it. This is an essential step in order to achieve the desired change in thinking and acting,” she said.

All photos thanks to @biobased.creations

Written by: John Vibes

John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture, and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems. He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast. Read More stories by John Vibes