Fungi are renewable and eco-friendly, and the stuff made from mycelium is lightweight, fire-proof and simple to produce.

Here’s a wild idea. Cities could be more sustainable if we built them from mushrooms.

Scientists have been exploring how mushrooms can be applied to building materials, water filtration systems and to fuel vehicles.

Yes, mushrooms. Those mysterious, tasty and sometimes psychedelic meaty fungi. The ones that spring from spores coddled in warm, dark and wet places.

Okay, well not really mushrooms, exactly. Like an iceberg, the visible part of a mushroom—that part we enjoy on our pizzas, in our pasta or beside our bacon—is only a small part of this unique life force.

Underneath is where the action is, where mushrooms develop tentacle-like roots called mycelium. These filaments grow in all directions, quickly, forming a complex web-like structure. It acts like glue. When the filaments are grown through waste materials such as sawdust or straw (technical term is substrate) it forms a solid stone-like block, much like cement.

This is the process that scientists are now exploring. But the idea of building stuff from mycelia is fairly grounded. Sorry, I mean established.

In 2014, MoMA in New York commissioned a tower made of 10,000 bricks comprised of living mushrooms and corn stalk waste. The tower, called Hy-Fi, wasn’t liveable and has since been composted, but did offer legitimacy to the “myco-architecture” field—which NASA is now also on board with.

Companies right now are developing products that use “myco-technology” to replace plastics and other harmful eco-damaging materials and processes. Think clothes, shoes made from vegan leather and packaging.

Then there’s the definitive impact on the global “meat alternative” food market.

The strongest argument for mycelia construction is sustainability. Normal building materials and methods are a massive contributor to climate change, which waste our natural resources.

Fungi are renewable and eco-friendly, and the stuff made from mycelium is lightweight, fire-proof and simple to produce.

Mushroom tech firms are also a thing now. Maurizio Montalti, from Italian mycelia production firm Mogu, envisions “a future where everything we need for a building project is made by fungi”. The company is propelling myco-architecture into the mainstream, producing flooring, acoustic panels and art pieces.

The humble mushie has indeed come out of the dark and, it seems, is destined for great things outside of the perfect risotto.

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