May 7, 2024 • 41 mins
Can you build a house with mushrooms? You can if you are Chris Maurer, an architect, a mycologist, and a visionary. Chris is the Principal Architect at Redhouse Studio, an architecture firm based in Cleveland, Ohio. Chris and his partners are working to revolutionize how we house ourselves, not with bricks and mortar but with bio-bricks, a carbon-sequestering fusion of fungi mycelium and plant waste. This regenerative, humanitarian-focused "mycotecture" can grow buildings on and off our planet. Mycotecture refers to the use of mushrooms and other fungi for architectural purposes. In this episode, Chris introduces us to the possibilities of the fungi kingdom in creating sustainable building materials. Chris's work is far-reaching. His MycoHAB project in Namibia uses mycotecture to convert waste bush into food and housing. His Off-Planet NIAC project with NASA would convert space radiation into buildings on Mars. Back here in Cleveland, his BioCycler technology promises to recycle dilapidated buildings while remediating our lead problem and rebuilding our city. We are captivated by the power and possibilities of fungi, and you will be too.
Guest:
Chris Maurer, Principal Architect at Redhouse Studio Architecture
Resources:
Follow Redhouse Studio on Instagram and Facebook
More on the MycoHAB project in Namibia
More on growing buildings on Mars
More on the BioCycler using fungi to remediate waste and rebuild our city.
Watch the Fantastic Fungi documentary.
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Contact us:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Diane Bickett (00:04):
You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, where the
eco-curious explore the uniqueand thriving environmental
community here in Northeast Ohio.
My name is Diane Bickett and myproducer is Greg Rotuno.
Together, we bring youinspiring stories from local
sustainability leaders andinvite you to connect, learn and
live with our community andplanet in mind.
(00:25):
Hello friends, it's a beautifulspring day here in Cleveland
and we're coming to you from RedHouse Studio.
It's an architecture firmlocated in the Ohio City
Firehouse and this is not atraditional architecture studio,
and its founder, chris Maurer,is not a traditional architect.
Red House Studio is pioneeringnew, sustainable and
(00:46):
regenerative ways to growbuildings on and off our planet.
It's called microtexture, whichrefers to the use of mushrooms
and other fungi forarchitectural purposes.
Please stay with us for afascinating conversation about
the potential of fungi to createthe building materials of our
future.
Welcome, chris.
Chris Maurer (01:05):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Diane Bickett (01:06):
Thanks for joining us.
Chris Maurer (01:08):
So, to our listeners, I'm holding what's
called what Chris calls abiobrick, which is something he
invented, and it's made frommushrooms or mycelium, right,
right, it's a composite of bothplant material and fungal
material.
So what happens is we have, youknow, a plant that is usually a
(01:30):
waste product or byproduct fromanother process, either
agriculture or industrialprocess, and then we'll grow
fungal mycelium on that, whichis kind of the root structure of
mushroom-producing organisms,and it binds it together, and so
all we need to do is reallypress it and heat it and compact
it into a masonry unit and wehave what's called a biobrick.
Diane Bickett (01:56):
And it's very hard, like I'm knocking on it.
Chris Maurer (01:59):
Yeah, your listeners can't see it, but if
you listen, it sounds a lot likewood, and that's basically what
we're looking at is it's awoody uh type block.
It's the plant material, uh hasthat woody characteristic to it
, the lignin and the cellulosethat plants have, um, and then
what happens is the mycelium uhactually starts to degrade the
(02:20):
lignin, which is the binder thatholds the that cellulose
together, and replaces it withthe fungal organism, which is
very chitin-rich, and the chitinfrom the fungi is, you know,
very similar to what insects andcrustaceans have as their
exoskeletons.
So it's this really, you know,polymeric material, and it's a
(02:40):
really good way to cement thematerial back together, so it
reconstitutes the woody material.
Wow, I can tell this is goingto be a really good way to
cement the material backtogether, so it reconstitutes
the woody material.
Diane Bickett (02:46):
Wow, I can tell this is going to be a really
interesting conversation.
So this brick itself it soundslike wood.
It looks like wood, but itwould replace certain things in
the building process.
And we'll get to that when wetalk about your biocycler
project, which you're trying tolaunch here in Cleveland.
(03:07):
But I'm curious how yourresearch into mycelium started,
since you're an architect bytraining.
Chris Maurer (03:15):
Right, I'm an architect and I've worked a
number of years in Africa, so Iwas living and working in Malawi
for a number of years and alsoin Rwanda.
Living and working in Malawifor a number of years and also
in Rwanda and having thatexperience working in limited
resource environments was reallyinstrumental in my development
as an architect and kind ofunderstanding ways to leverage
(03:36):
both the design process and theconstruction process to make as
much positive impact as possibleand to use as little resources
as possible.
When I repatriated, when I cameback to the United States, I
tried to continue that ethos inmy architecture and came to
realize that we're always inlimited resource environments
(04:00):
we're just not really aware ofit here where we can go to
hardware stores and lumber yardsand buy lumber and concrete
blocks All of those things arereadily accessible here but what
we're not really considering isthe environmental footprint of
those materials and how damagingthey are.
They really shouldn't be usedin a limited resource
(04:23):
environment, which is planetEarth.
They really shouldn't be usedin a limited resource
environment, which is planetEarth.
And so we looked for differentways that you know architecture
could regenerate and came acrossthis.
You know concept of microtextureand had seen some artists and
some material producers thatwere making materials from
mycelium and started to lookinto the process and understand
(04:43):
that what you do is you frommycelium.
And started to look into theprocess and understand that what
you do is you grow mycelium ondifferent substrates and then
you can make manufacturedifferent products out of that.
Having just worked in Africa, Iwondered why the process for
growing mycelium, which is thesame as growing mushrooms,
wasn't producing food andmaterials at the same time, and
(05:05):
that's when I started cominginto this concept of creating
food and materials in the samevertically integrated process.
And that's basically what'sbecome our Mycohab project.
Now In Africa, we're usingwaste biomass and we're creating
food and buildings in the sameprocess.
Diane Bickett (05:27):
Okay.
Well, it also has implicationsfor here in Cleveland, for
dealing with our dilapidatedbuildings and our lead problem.
But we'll get to that.
But I think we need to back upand talk a little bit about
fungi Before we startedrecording Greg's like is it we
were trying to figure out, is itfungi or fungi, or fungi?
(05:48):
So we're going to go with fungitoday, which is a plural of
fungus, right?
Chris Maurer (05:53):
That's right.
Yeah, I like to use fungi ifthere's a you know dad joke
involved.
Diane Bickett (05:59):
And you are a dad .
So that, yeah, I'm a dad.
Chris Maurer (06:01):
I usually default to the fungi, though, that's you
know kind of the way we talkabout it.
Diane Bickett (06:08):
Okay, so when I think of a fungus, I think of a
mushroom.
Are all mushrooms funguses, oris all I think?
I read all.
Chris Maurer (06:20):
That's true.
Diane Bickett (06:21):
A mushroom is a fungus, but not all fungi are
mushrooms.
Chris Maurer (06:25):
That's right.
Yeah, that's a good way to putit.
So you have amushroom-producing organism, is
going to be a fungus.
But there are different typesof fungi that don't produce
mushrooms.
You can think of yeast, that'sone that doesn't produce
mushrooms.
Molds, a lot of times won'tproduce mushrooms.
It doesn't produce mushrooms.
(06:45):
Molds a lot of times won'tproduce mushrooms.
The fungal organism itself isoften either singular or becomes
a multicellular organism thathas a mycelium web to it, and so
mycelia are basically like theroots of mushrooms or the roots
of the fungal organism.
But you know, that's how youwould think of it visually, but
(07:09):
actually academically it'sbetter to think of the mycelium
as the organism and the mushroomas the fruiting body of that
organism.
So when you compare it to atree, it's not just the roots of
the tree, it's actually theroots and the tree and the
leaves, everything but the fruit, like the apple or the orange
(07:30):
of that tree.
So the mushroom is that appleor orange.
Diane Bickett (07:33):
Okay, so all the real work is kind of going on
through the mycelium.
Essentially, I learned thatfungi are not in the plant
kingdom or the animal kingdomand they're actually more
closely aligned with the animalkingdom, which is fascinating
because they're very intelligent.
I learned all this fromwatching Fantastic Fungi on
(07:55):
Netflix the other night, whichis a highly recommended show,
documentary to watch.
But I think that scientists andresearchers are just beginning
to tap into the possibilities offungi to teach us, to heal us
and to heal the planet, and so Ithink you're on to something.
So tell us about sort of themycelium as a connector and what
(08:20):
it does in your process.
What it does in your process,how it helps you decompose or
make the bricks that you'redoing, and how is your research
connected to all of this.
Chris Maurer (08:31):
Okay, yeah, so you mentioned it's a different
kingdom altogether.
There are really three ways inwhich fungi grow.
They can be symbiotic with theplant kingdom, and that's, you
know, things like burrells ordifferent species of mushrooms
that grow along with trees, and,to your point about them being
(08:54):
connective tissue betweendifferent things, that's what
kind of creates this connectionbetween trees and forests and
actually live with themsymbiotically and work together
to kind of even help treescommunicate, which is
fascinating.
So I do recommend fantasticfungi too, to learn more about
that.
There's also parasitic fungi,which can kill organisms, and
(09:19):
that includes animals likeinsects in some cases, and there
are pathogens that actuallyattack humans too, but usually
it's going to be a plant thatthey're going to be parasitic of
, and so they will kill trees.
And then the third kind issaprophytic fungi, which are the
(09:40):
kind that actually grow on deadmatter.
So if a tree falls in theforest, it doesn't just pile up,
it would pile up if there wereno fungi to attack that.
And what fungi do is they breakdown the dead matter that are
in the forest and create, youknow, turn trees into soil
basically.
So cultivators, mushroomcultivators, usually work with
(10:01):
these saprophytic fungi, andwhat you can do is just take
dead matter, dead plant matter,including straw from grain
farming or sawdust from anindustrial byproduct, from like
a sawmill.
You can take that sawdust orthat straw and then you can grow
(10:22):
fungi on that, grow mycelium onthat, and that's how
cultivators will actually growmushrooms.
So they'll take that biologicalbiomass, they'll pasteurize it
to kill all the living organismsthat are probably already
growing on that and then they'lltake it into a laboratory and
inoculate it with just a littlebit of mycelium.
(10:43):
That gives it free reign overthat substrate to grow Okay.
Diane Bickett (10:47):
So just they need a few spores and the mycelium
just does its thing.
Chris Maurer (10:51):
Yeah, you usually start with either a liquid
culture or what's called grainspawn, and that's mycelium
that's growing on verynutrient-rich grain things like
rice berries or wheat berriesand things like that but that's
mixed in the lab with thesubstrate that's been
pasteurized and then whathappens is the mycelium will
(11:17):
start to create aninterconnected web of material
around all of those particles ofeither sawdust or straw and
kind of connect together, andafter they've fully colonized is
the term that's used for thatthe substrate they will start to
grow the mushrooms.
You usually add a little bit offresh air exchange, you open up
the container that it's growingin so that you get more oxygen
(11:40):
in there, add some humidity tothe room and then the mushrooms
start to fruit because they seethat as the trigger for growing
the reproductive organ, if youwill, which is the mushroom
which releases spores, and sothat's the trigger that makes
that happen.
So you know, this is, you know,well known, it's been done for,
(12:03):
you know, centuries, basicallypeople being able to grow
saprophytic mushrooms on deadmatter like this, and then
usually what happens is thecultivator will harvest those
mushrooms and then they willthrow away what's left over,
which is the mycelium that'sbinding together all of this
woody material that's left over,together, all of this woody
(12:25):
material that's in, you know,leftover.
What we found is that you canuse that for any number of
things.
You can, you know, break it upand reconstitute it in any kind
of shape and it'll form thatshape and you can actually have,
you know, solid objects, likeyou know, you saw the skull that
we've made out of it and wehave some sculptures and some
art that's been made from that.
(12:46):
But if you take that materialand you form it into a brick and
heat and compact that, thenthat's when you get these
stronger materials like we'reshowing here.
That has strength that's verysimilar to concrete.
It's strong as wood.
It has a lot of the sameproperties as wood, which
(13:06):
includes insulation.
It's in many cases we'veactually, you know, isolated
some of the bioperformativeaspects of that, which include
remediation as it's growing, andwe've even you know, we're
working with NASA now on makingspace radiation attenuating
materials out of that too.
(13:27):
One of the things that isreally impressive about the
fungal kingdom is thatmelanin-rich fungi are actually
able to transduct ionizingradiation.
That's the type of radiationyou would find off planet Earth
ionizing radiation so that's thetype of radiation you would
find off planet Earth.
(13:48):
Outside the Earth's magneticshield you'll get X-rays and
gamma rays and particleradiation, which includes
galactic cosmic rays.
We found that the fungalmaterials are very good at
blocking from that because ofthe melanin they produce,
firstly, and then some of theother biochemicals that are
involved in the growth of thefungus.
Diane Bickett (14:06):
Holy cow.
Greg Rotuno (14:07):
Congratulations.
You just said the coolest thingthat's ever been said on this
podcast.
Chris Maurer (14:11):
No doubt Space radiation fungi.
Greg Rotuno (14:15):
Yeah, I have a couple of follow-up questions,
if I may.
Oh absolutely, and I don't knowif Di, if you were going to
talk about this at some point,but what's like the size of the
operation to do, like to producethese materials at scale?
Chris Maurer (14:27):
well, um, so that's a good question because
we're in the process of scalingsome of these projects.
We we have a company in africacalled mycohab that again it's
turning this uh, encroacherspecies, this bush that's
causing desertification innamibia, into both food and
housing.
We're growing mushrooms on thatand we're using the waste from
(14:47):
the mushroom cultivation to makethese very large micro blocks
that, in this case, we'veactually made the world's first
structural building out of thoseblocks, and so we have a staff
of about eight people that areworking there, and you know,
some of some folks are workingon the farm, some folks are
working in the manufacturingpart of that, but we're able to
(15:11):
make enough blocks to do threeor four houses a year with that
type of scale.
What we want to do is get thatto the larger scale, where a lot
of this is more automated.
We have a larger cultivationcenter and a larger
manufacturing center, and thenour hope would be to do dozens,
ideally hundreds, of homes peryear using that, which would be
(15:33):
a further stepping stone todoing thousands and then
eventually licensing thatprocess to others and doing
millions.
The reason why we want this toscale so prolifically is because
there are millions of tons ofbiomass available in Namibia
that need to be thinned from thegrasslands because this bush is
(15:55):
really causing environmentalhavoc there and because 25% of
the population is living ininformal settlements and there's
a huge need for housing.
And the third reason is thesematerials actually store the
carbon dioxide that those thatbush drew down in its you know,
(16:18):
in its growth cycle.
So normally what would happenis people would take this bush
and they would burn it to getrid of it, and that's going to
release that carbon dioxide intothe environment.
Other things you can do with itwill also release that.
Even if it just decays, it'sgoing to release that carbon
dioxide which is going to makeit carbon neutral because it
drew down the CO2, but it'sgoing to release it.
When we store it in buildingmaterials, you actually have a
(16:38):
longer storage of that carbondioxide and you know,
potentially decades, potentiallycenturies, you can store that
CO2 and actually mitigategreenhouse gases.
Buildings are responsible forabout 40% of the world's
greenhouse gases.
If we started adopting theseprocesses that actually store
carbon dioxide, you could seemanufacturing turn the dial the
(17:02):
other direction when it comes toCO2 emissions.
We could actually sequester CO2emissions in the manufacturer
of these products, and that'swhat makes it terribly exciting
for me is the fact that we canleverage again architecture and
construction to have positiveaspects, and that way we kind of
regard it as regenerativearchitecture.
(17:22):
Normally, as I mentioned,buildings are responsible for
40% of the world's greenhousegases.
Concrete, aluminum and steelalone are responsible for 23% of
the greenhouse gases annually,and so switching to these carbon
sequestering processes couldhave a huge impact on the, on
(17:44):
the you know, the buildingindustry's carbon footprint okay
, so how did you have anotherquestion?
Greg Rotuno (17:51):
just one follow-up.
So, like having said all that,is it financially less resource
intensive than traditionalbuilding materials as well?
Chris Maurer (18:01):
Yes.
So right now, you know we're inresearch and development.
There's a lot of cost that goesinto that.
We're working, you know, withresearchers at MIT and Johns
Hopkins and differentuniversities.
So you know that makes it kindof expensive what we're doing
now.
That makes it kind of expensivewhat we're doing now, but the
goal and the business model isthat this will actually be a
(18:23):
cost-negative product orcost-neutral product.
Because in the case of Mycohab,we're producing mushrooms.
Those mushrooms can be sold atmarket and then by the time you
have this material, it'sbasically the waste resource
that comes out of that process.
All you have to do is compactit and let it sit on a shelf and
it's, you know, buildingmaterial the next day.
(18:44):
So it's a very-.
Diane Bickett (18:46):
So making food and housing and Very, very
inexpensive system, sequesteringcarbon, all at the same time.
Chris Maurer (18:51):
Yeah, so in the R&D phase it's not, you know,
exactly cheap at this point, butas we scale it to an industrial
level, that's one of theeconomies of scale you get with.
That is that the mushroom saleswill pay for all of the
building materials, and that'swhy we're kind of looking at a
model where these buildings willbe humanitarian housing.
(19:13):
That's where the need is mostlyin Namibia and then we can
export the mushroom products tothe United States and you can
see a tea on the shelf at thesupermarket.
One of them says we're buildinghouses in Africa, the other one
doesn't.
You might choose the one thatis actually doing the
humanitarian work.
Diane Bickett (19:31):
I love that your office is right next door to
Drink Local Drink Tap Our friendAaron Huber-Rosen, who works in
Uganda, to bring sanitation andwater.
So the Cleveland connection toAfrica is pretty cool.
Chris Maurer (19:45):
Yeah.
Diane Bickett (19:46):
And the innovative things that you're
doing.
So you started your work inNamibia with this project, but
you're from Canton and you're aKent State professor and you're
an architect and now you're amycologist.
I love that story.
How did that all come about?
Give us some background.
Chris Maurer (20:07):
Okay, yeah, as you mentioned, I grew up in Canton.
Then I went to Kent StateUniversity for architecture.
I got my bachelor and master'sdegree there, spent a couple
semesters in Florence, italy,with their program there, spent
a couple semesters in Florence,italy, with their program, and
so that you know, got meinterested in traveling, seeing
the world, learning new, new,you know ways of looking at
(20:28):
architecture.
After graduating I moved to NewYork City and worked at Studio
MDA for Marcus Tohanci, who wasa protege of Zaha Hadid, who's a
very famous Pritzker Prizewinning architect, and so we
were doing lots of differenttypes of designs, a lot of very
(20:53):
interesting and expressivearchitecture for very wealthy
people, impressive architecturefor very wealthy people.
And some of that, some of thearchitecture, was also at the
other end of the scale, where wewere doing humanitarian work.
And one of the projects that Iwas most involved with took me
(21:14):
to Malawi and I was the projectmanager for a school for girls
in Malawi and I lived and workedthere with my at that time
girlfriend currently wife, whereshe was also the landscape
architect project manager onthat project.
And, you know, that's where youknow kind of formed this
(21:36):
concept of working in limitedresources and actually
leveraging them to the best oftheir ability.
When I came back here toCleveland, I started teaching at
Kent State University and wewere working with the Developing
World Studios, where we wereactually spending time talking
(21:57):
with folks in Rwanda and Malawi,and that's kind of where we
developed this concept for usingregarding Cleveland as one of
the limited resourceenvironments as well.
Diane Bickett (22:20):
I'm excited about what you are doing here in
Cleveland because it's got greatpromise for remediating lead
and addressing the dilapidatedbuildings and also growing
literally new buildings.
Explain how mycelium can helpwith Cleveland's lid problem.
Chris Maurer (22:45):
Right.
So when we go into new areas,we're always looking for what is
the, you know, waste productthat we would want to turn into,
you know, new building material.
So in Africa was the the bushwe're, you know, looking at.
We're looking at different waysof actually converting ionizing
radiation, as I mentioned, intobuilding materials when we're
(23:06):
working in space.
But here in Cleveland what wehave is a glut of crumbling
infrastructure.
We have thousands of housesthat are slated for demolition,
um.
There are hundreds of housesthat are torn down, uh every
month and that material, um isis too hard to separate into
(23:27):
constituent parts that could berecycled, um, so a lot of times
it's just put directly intolandfills, which, um?
You know there's 600 milliontons of um, c and D waste that
go into landfills every year,which is mostly turning into
greenhouse gases in thelandfills and causing
environmental damage, becausethere tend to be petrochemicals
(23:50):
in that and even heavy metalswhich are the worst to deal with
.
Diane Bickett (23:56):
Yeah, many of our C&D landfills construction and
demolition debris landfills inour county, cuyahoga County, sit
along the Cuyahoga River.
So, that's just leaching inthere.
Chris Maurer (24:07):
Yeah, and so one of the things that fungi are
actually able to do is toremediate a lot of these toxins.
So with the petrochemicals,things that have very long
molecule chains, these arehydrocarbons that used to be
plants, right, so they're madeof the same building blocks and
the fungi kind of regard that asthe plant material, and what
(24:28):
they do is they break them downinto smaller molecule chains,
which actually makes them safe.
So you turn these long polymersinto smaller monomers and then
they're not dangerous anymore.
So it's a basic remediationprocess that comes from the
fungal digestion.
What they do is the way fungidigest is they secrete enzymes,
and it's an external digestion,and the enzymes actually break
(24:51):
down those chemicals.
When it comes to things likeheavy metals, those are
elemental toxins, so they'rereally hard to deal with, and so
you almost have to do exactlythe opposite, which is to pair
them with longer molecule chains, to take these atomic toxins
like lead or arsenic or cadmiumthat exist in the built
environment, and then the fungican create these different
(25:11):
biochemicals that actually canlatch onto them, which make them
easier to filter, and that'sthe easiest way to extract, that
is, to filter that, or almost.
There's a term called biomining,where these organisms can kind
of seek out those, those metals,and actually extract them, like
, like as if they were miningthat, that material, or the
(25:33):
other thing is to chelate thosematerials.
So these chemicals can actuallylatch onto the chemical, the
elemental toxins like lead, andit makes it so that they're
biologically unavailable, andthat's not just for people, that
includes, you know, vermin.
That would, you know,eventually go up the food chain
if other microbes or, you know,insects, started eating that
(25:56):
material.
And then it went to a bird, toa cat, to, you know, all the way
up the I don't know why she atea fly song.
So to keep that out of the foodweb is very important because,
as you mentioned, when they goto landfill a lot of these
chemicals are just leaching intothe water supply and then
getting back into ourenvironment, and so it's
(26:19):
important to do that regardless.
But what we're able to do withthe biocycler process is to be
able to remediate that and turnthat into useful goods at the
end of the day, because, as Imentioned, the materials are
actually safe at the end of thisprocess and we've done some
studies that it keeps gettingbetter all the time.
(26:39):
And we've done some studiesthat you know it keeps getting
better all the time.
We started with, you know, 30%leachate improvement and the
(26:59):
most recent studies we did wereup to 90% filtration of the lead
particles that were in the C&Dwaste or in the soil waste
before it came out.
So we plan to get to 100%, andthat's kind of the goal here is
that either all of the heavymetals will be completely
extracted from it or the partsthat are left, which are usually
parts per million or even partsper billion very, very trace
elements that aren't dangerouslevels at all, those become
(27:20):
chelated so that if they were tosomehow come into hand-to-mouth
contact with a small child oreven an animal, they wouldn't
get into the bloodstream of thatorganism.
Diane Bickett (27:32):
Okay, so you mentioned the biocycler.
That's a machine or anindustrial process?
Chris Maurer (27:38):
Yeah.
Diane Bickett (27:38):
And where is it?
Do you have like a prototypesomewhere here in Cleveland?
Chris Maurer (27:42):
Yeah, it's a process, more than anything.
And so it's basically verysimilar to what we're doing in
Namibia, where we're using, youknow, fungi to create new
materials, but instead of foodand housing in this regard, it's
the remediation and housing.
And you know Cleveland, we havefour times the incidence of
(28:02):
lead poisoning here in Cleveland.
So we kind of consider this,you know, ground zero for the
need for this type of work.
And in the same way that youknow, the burning of the
Cuyahoga was the impetus for theClean Air and Water Act and for
the creation of the EPA theClean Air and Water Act and for
(28:24):
the creation of the EPA we'rehoping that people will see the
need here in Cleveland and lookinto these types of processes
that can actually be the impetusfor dealing with this problem.
Diane Bickett (28:34):
And what organizations are you working
with in Cleveland?
Chris Maurer (28:37):
Right.
So, yeah, we're very fortunateto have a lot of, you know,
grassroots foundations and somesupport that we're working with.
The Black Environmental LeadersAssociation is one.
Collective Citizens OrganizedAgainst Lead, or CEQL, is
another one, and so, you know,we've teamed up on a lot of
processes along with CaseWestern Reserve University and
(29:01):
even folks at Johns HopkinsUniversity, where we're doing
the scientific research thatproves the system, but also
trying to scale the processes tothe industrial level, where we
could be building houses, likewe're doing in Africa, using the
same processes.
Diane Bickett (29:18):
So humanitarian architecture in Africa and in
Cleveland.
Chris Maurer (29:22):
Yeah.
Diane Bickett (29:22):
That's cool.
So tell us what you're doing onMars.
I did say on planet and offplanet.
Chris Maurer (29:29):
Yeah, so we're working with NASA through the
NIAC program, which is NASAInnovative Advanced Concepts,
and this is kind of agame-changing technology program
to develop habitats that cangrow themselves off planet.
Diane Bickett (29:46):
Whoa, how does that happen?
Chris Maurer (29:47):
So the way we're proposing it now is that there
is an inflatable structure thatwould fill up with gases to kind
of inflate into a building onthe moon or Mars, but the outer
shell of that fills with waterand different nutrients.
That then would activate someliving organisms we have in
(30:09):
these small bioreactors thatlink together.
And these bioreactors, youcould think of them as like
cells in a living organism, butyou could also think of them
like bricks in a dome, and sothey link up together and as
they grow they turn into thesehard materials like you see in
front of you now or that yourlisteners can hear that become
(30:32):
the outer shell of that, and sothey have this.
You know, bio performativeability to shield from radiation
that I mentioned earlier.
This is a concept calledradiosynthesis or radiotropism,
that is able to transduceionizing radiation into benign
forms of energy, which includeheat, which are very useful on
(30:53):
cold planets anyway, and they'reable to insulate as well
(31:15):
gravity and a pressurized vesselthat you're living in.
You're actually designing aballoon rather than something
that needs to deal with weatherand gravity.
So the tensile fabrics that areinvolved with the inflatable
are the things that are actuallythe structure of the building,
and then the bio-terials thatgrow within those do the other
(31:37):
things that the building needs,and the main things are the
thermal insulation, because youhave very hot and very cold
environments on the moon andMars, and then you also need
that radiation protection, andthat radiation is actually the
biggest showstopper right nowfor missions to the moon.
We've had 12 people on the moon.
(31:58):
You know, we've had 12 peopleon the moon and all of them were
very lucky to not get a hugeradiation dose from.
You know a solar event thathappened.
Never thought about that.
The longest stay on the moonwas, you know, 72 hours or so,
75 hours, I think, and they justmissed a solar wind event that
could have been deadly for themnot immediately, but could have
led to cancer down the line.
Diane Bickett (32:21):
Wow, so these would just grow themselves.
Essentially, when you get themthere, probably cheaper than
sending construction materialsto Mars.
Chris Maurer (32:33):
We joke that you just grow your own house, just
add water.
Because the thing is it costs alot of money to send anything
even to low Earth orbit, as wedo with the space station, to
get things to Mars.
You know, some estimates are$100,000.
Some are, you know, a milliondollars to get a pound of
(32:53):
material.
So that's a can of soda.
You know it costs a milliondollars to get that, at least to
Mars it'll cost more than thatprobably.
And so to be able to send justgrams of material that then grow
into tons of material by addingwater which you source on the
moon or Mars, you're savingtrillions of dollars potentially
(33:15):
.
And so that that was the firstreason that that I think NASA
was interested in this idea.
And then the other thing is thespace radiation protection that
you can get from thesebioperformative materials which
we're constantly testing.
We've sent some materials tothe space station already and
they were flown on the outsideof the space station for six
(33:36):
months at a time, and then webring them back and we see what
kind of degradation they had.
Some materials don't make itback because of the radiation
dosage, because of the atomicoxygen that they receive there,
but our materials came back withvery superficial damage to them
.
There were micrometeoroids,which are basically tiny little
(33:58):
bullets that are flying throughspace all the time, actually
embedded in the materials, sothey were able to stop that.
Diane Bickett (34:04):
So did you go to NASA to see this?
Did you get to see the?
Chris Maurer (34:10):
Well, yeah, they were done here in Cleveland at
NASA Glenn.
They were packaged here, thensent down to Houston where they
did some more check-in and sometesting and things like that.
They won't just send anythingto space.
So there's, you know, kind ofsome rattling testing and some
outgassing testing and thingslike that.
They make sure that they're notjust going to explode into
(34:32):
space.
And then they were, you know,launched from the East Coast
somewhere I forget exactly wherethey were launched from In an
uncrewed mission and then thematerials were met by the folks
on the space station and we havesome photographs of the
astronauts there kind ofunpacking them, and we also have
(34:54):
photographs of them on theoutside of the space station and
you can actually see theatmosphere of the Earth in the
background of some of thesephotos and it's really just
stunning.
Diane Bickett (35:03):
So they haven't come back yet?
No, they have.
They have yeah.
Chris Maurer (35:07):
I got some some of the cutoffs here, but they're
currently at the University ofAkron.
They're doing some testingthere.
Dr Ali Dineshwala and his teamare looking at them because he
does research into melanin and,as I mentioned, melanin is
probably the biochemical withinthese fungal organisms that does
(35:28):
the most in the space radiationproduction, and we're also
working with a researcher atJohns Hopkins University,
rodames Cordero, who is also anexpert in melanin production and
melanin studies, and so they'reboth looking at this and
writing the papers.
I just get to help make thesamples.
Diane Bickett (35:53):
I don't write the papers web because you're, I
mean it's, it's just reachingout into so many places and and
into so many researchinstitutions and nasa, and it's
just, yeah, it absolutely is Imeet a lot of fun guys and fun
gals.
I was waiting for a fun joke,gotcha I feel like mushrooms are
(36:16):
having their moment too, withfood and coffee and all that
stuff we talked about.
I'm looking at a packet of teayou gave me from Four Sigmatic.
It's made from reishi mushrooms.
So many benefits to the humanbody to consume.
We're finding anyway to consumeLion's Mane for you.
(36:39):
You said mental clarity, andthen what were some of the other
?
Chris Maurer (36:44):
Well, yeah, can we ?
Diane Bickett (36:45):
leave some parting thoughts on how
individuals can get acquainted.
Chris Maurer (36:49):
Oh, absolutely yeah.
So Four Sigmatic is one,mudwater is another.
Those are kind of higher-endproducts where they have
different adaptogenic organismsor different adaptogenic
mushrooms and plants.
Diane Bickett (37:03):
And what does that mean adaptogenic?
Chris Maurer (37:06):
It's basically any kind of food that has a
positive medical process.
That happens so with the reishiand the turkey tail, which are
two types of mushrooms that gointo teas.
They have a lot oftriterpenoids and beta-glucans
(37:31):
and these are biochemicals thatwhen they're in your body they
kind of mimic the effect ofbeing sick.
They don't make you sick, butit tells your immune system to
hey, wake up there.
You know there's something inhere that you need to address,
and then that actually is kindof a workout for your immune
(37:51):
system, and so they'reconsidered immune system
boosting chemicals that comenaturally from those mushrooms.
There are some claims aroundlion's mane of stimulating brain
power.
They look like little brains,so that's good too, but yeah.
I think we all need some of thatI'm sure the reishi is also
(38:16):
considered to help with sleeping.
So that's one I do for sure,and there are some studies
around turkey tail actuallybeing helpful, along with
whatever your doctor recommendsfor cancer treatment, and it may
(38:37):
or may not be directly relatedto the cancer or just helping
you feel better as you gothrough cancer treatment, but
there's, you know, a lot oftheories on that and a lot of
research on that and it's, youknow, definitely worth looking
into and trying if you're into,you know, some of these
adaptogenic or homeopathic.
You know methods of you knowtreating your body.
Diane Bickett (39:01):
Do you think the medical community is coming
along when it comes to accepting?
Chris Maurer (39:07):
Absolutely, I think the fungal kingdom.
Absolutely, and I think you knowa lot of it has to do with the
psychedelics and there is reallygreat research at Johns Hopkins
now around the psychedelicsbeing a treatment for depression
, for addiction and other thingslike that.
And so you know it's medicallystudied and you know very clear
(39:32):
benefits that come from that.
And it's not just, you know,tripping on your own.
It's part of a process that youdo with doctors and there's a,
you know, a speaking part tothat too and like a therapy part
that goes along with it.
(39:53):
A lot of great documentariesabout that treating PTSD.
Adaptogenic things that Imentioned, like the, you know,
the triterpenoids and thebeta-glucans and all of those
chemicals are scientificallyproven to do certain things that
can be very useful if usedcorrectly and if you need them.
Diane Bickett (40:10):
Yeah, well, if you need your brain rewired.
Chris Maurer (40:13):
Yeah.
Diane Bickett (40:15):
Well, this has been fascinating.
Greg, do you have any finalquestions?
Greg Rotuno (40:19):
No, I've been holding my jaw up the whole time
on the floor if I wasn't.
Yeah, this has been fascinating, Greg.
Do you have any final questions?
No, I've been holding my jaw upthe whole time because it would
be on the floor if I wasn't.
Yeah, this is I'm enamored.
Diane Bickett (40:27):
Yeah, super interesting.
So I'd like to cover this againwith some mycologists and maybe
do some foraging, who knows?
Well, thank you so much.
Chris Maurer (40:38):
Chris.
Diane Bickett (40:39):
Do you want to?
Chris Maurer (40:41):
Yeah, when it comes to foraging, I can
recommend.
You know, we're right upstairsfrom Larder Delicatessen right
now and Jeremy Umansky leadsforaging classes out of Larder,
so check them out too if that'ssomething you want to get into.
And I was just down there.
He had some golden oystermushrooms which are.
They're beautiful and it'sgoing to be on the menu this
(41:04):
week, so stop by.
Diane Bickett (41:05):
Oh cool, I'm so glad you mentioned that.
Well, we will.
Greg Rotuno (41:09):
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak
CLE.
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(41:30):
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Stay tuned for more importantand inspiring stories to come.
You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, where the
eco-curious explore the uniqueand thriving environmental
community here in Northeast Ohio.
My name is Diane Bickett and myproducer is Greg Rotuno.
Together, we bring youinspiring stories from local
sustainability leaders andinvite you to connect, learn and
live with our community andplanet in mind.
(00:25):
Hello friends, it's a beautifulspring day here in Cleveland
and we're coming to you from RedHouse Studio.
It's an architecture firmlocated in the Ohio City
Firehouse and this is not atraditional architecture studio,
and its founder, chris Maurer,is not a traditional architect.
Red House Studio is pioneeringnew, sustainable and
(00:46):
regenerative ways to growbuildings on and off our planet.
It's called microtexture, whichrefers to the use of mushrooms
and other fungi forarchitectural purposes.
Please stay with us for afascinating conversation about
the potential of fungi to createthe building materials of our
future.
Welcome, chris.
Chris Maurer (01:05):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Diane Bickett (01:06):
Thanks for joining us.
Chris Maurer (01:08):
So, to our listeners, I'm holding what's
called what Chris calls abiobrick, which is something he
invented, and it's made frommushrooms or mycelium, right,
right, it's a composite of bothplant material and fungal
material.
So what happens is we have, youknow, a plant that is usually a
(01:30):
waste product or byproduct fromanother process, either
agriculture or industrialprocess, and then we'll grow
fungal mycelium on that, whichis kind of the root structure of
mushroom-producing organisms,and it binds it together, and so
all we need to do is reallypress it and heat it and compact
it into a masonry unit and wehave what's called a biobrick.
Diane Bickett (01:56):
And it's very hard, like I'm knocking on it.
Chris Maurer (01:59):
Yeah, your listeners can't see it, but if
you listen, it sounds a lot likewood, and that's basically what
we're looking at is it's awoody uh type block.
It's the plant material, uh hasthat woody characteristic to it
, the lignin and the cellulosethat plants have, um, and then
what happens is the mycelium uhactually starts to degrade the
(02:20):
lignin, which is the binder thatholds the that cellulose
together, and replaces it withthe fungal organism, which is
very chitin-rich, and the chitinfrom the fungi is, you know,
very similar to what insects andcrustaceans have as their
exoskeletons.
So it's this really, you know,polymeric material, and it's a
(02:40):
really good way to cement thematerial back together, so it
reconstitutes the woody material.
Wow, I can tell this is goingto be a really good way to
cement the material backtogether, so it reconstitutes
the woody material.
Diane Bickett (02:46):
Wow, I can tell this is going to be a really
interesting conversation.
So this brick itself it soundslike wood.
It looks like wood, but itwould replace certain things in
the building process.
And we'll get to that when wetalk about your biocycler
project, which you're trying tolaunch here in Cleveland.
(03:07):
But I'm curious how yourresearch into mycelium started,
since you're an architect bytraining.
Chris Maurer (03:15):
Right, I'm an architect and I've worked a
number of years in Africa, so Iwas living and working in Malawi
for a number of years and alsoin Rwanda.
Living and working in Malawifor a number of years and also
in Rwanda and having thatexperience working in limited
resource environments was reallyinstrumental in my development
as an architect and kind ofunderstanding ways to leverage
(03:36):
both the design process and theconstruction process to make as
much positive impact as possibleand to use as little resources
as possible.
When I repatriated, when I cameback to the United States, I
tried to continue that ethos inmy architecture and came to
realize that we're always inlimited resource environments
(04:00):
we're just not really aware ofit here where we can go to
hardware stores and lumber yardsand buy lumber and concrete
blocks All of those things arereadily accessible here but what
we're not really considering isthe environmental footprint of
those materials and how damagingthey are.
They really shouldn't be usedin a limited resource
(04:23):
environment, which is planetEarth.
They really shouldn't be usedin a limited resource
environment, which is planetEarth.
And so we looked for differentways that you know architecture
could regenerate and came acrossthis.
You know concept of microtextureand had seen some artists and
some material producers thatwere making materials from
mycelium and started to lookinto the process and understand
(04:43):
that what you do is you frommycelium.
And started to look into theprocess and understand that what
you do is you grow mycelium ondifferent substrates and then
you can make manufacturedifferent products out of that.
Having just worked in Africa, Iwondered why the process for
growing mycelium, which is thesame as growing mushrooms,
wasn't producing food andmaterials at the same time, and
(05:05):
that's when I started cominginto this concept of creating
food and materials in the samevertically integrated process.
And that's basically what'sbecome our Mycohab project.
Now In Africa, we're usingwaste biomass and we're creating
food and buildings in the sameprocess.
Diane Bickett (05:27):
Okay.
Well, it also has implicationsfor here in Cleveland, for
dealing with our dilapidatedbuildings and our lead problem.
But we'll get to that.
But I think we need to back upand talk a little bit about
fungi Before we startedrecording Greg's like is it we
were trying to figure out, is itfungi or fungi, or fungi?
(05:48):
So we're going to go with fungitoday, which is a plural of
fungus, right?
Chris Maurer (05:53):
That's right.
Yeah, I like to use fungi ifthere's a you know dad joke
involved.
Diane Bickett (05:59):
And you are a dad .
So that, yeah, I'm a dad.
Chris Maurer (06:01):
I usually default to the fungi, though, that's you
know kind of the way we talkabout it.
Diane Bickett (06:08):
Okay, so when I think of a fungus, I think of a
mushroom.
Are all mushrooms funguses, oris all I think?
I read all.
Chris Maurer (06:20):
That's true.
Diane Bickett (06:21):
A mushroom is a fungus, but not all fungi are
mushrooms.
Chris Maurer (06:25):
That's right.
Yeah, that's a good way to putit.
So you have amushroom-producing organism, is
going to be a fungus.
But there are different typesof fungi that don't produce
mushrooms.
You can think of yeast, that'sone that doesn't produce
mushrooms.
Molds, a lot of times won'tproduce mushrooms.
It doesn't produce mushrooms.
(06:45):
Molds a lot of times won'tproduce mushrooms.
The fungal organism itself isoften either singular or becomes
a multicellular organism thathas a mycelium web to it, and so
mycelia are basically like theroots of mushrooms or the roots
of the fungal organism.
But you know, that's how youwould think of it visually, but
(07:09):
actually academically it'sbetter to think of the mycelium
as the organism and the mushroomas the fruiting body of that
organism.
So when you compare it to atree, it's not just the roots of
the tree, it's actually theroots and the tree and the
leaves, everything but the fruit, like the apple or the orange
(07:30):
of that tree.
So the mushroom is that appleor orange.
Diane Bickett (07:33):
Okay, so all the real work is kind of going on
through the mycelium.
Essentially, I learned thatfungi are not in the plant
kingdom or the animal kingdomand they're actually more
closely aligned with the animalkingdom, which is fascinating
because they're very intelligent.
I learned all this fromwatching Fantastic Fungi on
(07:55):
Netflix the other night, whichis a highly recommended show,
documentary to watch.
But I think that scientists andresearchers are just beginning
to tap into the possibilities offungi to teach us, to heal us
and to heal the planet, and so Ithink you're on to something.
So tell us about sort of themycelium as a connector and what
(08:20):
it does in your process.
What it does in your process,how it helps you decompose or
make the bricks that you'redoing, and how is your research
connected to all of this.
Chris Maurer (08:31):
Okay, yeah, so you mentioned it's a different
kingdom altogether.
There are really three ways inwhich fungi grow.
They can be symbiotic with theplant kingdom, and that's, you
know, things like burrells ordifferent species of mushrooms
that grow along with trees, and,to your point about them being
(08:54):
connective tissue betweendifferent things, that's what
kind of creates this connectionbetween trees and forests and
actually live with themsymbiotically and work together
to kind of even help treescommunicate, which is
fascinating.
So I do recommend fantasticfungi too, to learn more about
that.
There's also parasitic fungi,which can kill organisms, and
(09:19):
that includes animals likeinsects in some cases, and there
are pathogens that actuallyattack humans too, but usually
it's going to be a plant thatthey're going to be parasitic of
, and so they will kill trees.
And then the third kind issaprophytic fungi, which are the
(09:40):
kind that actually grow on deadmatter.
So if a tree falls in theforest, it doesn't just pile up,
it would pile up if there wereno fungi to attack that.
And what fungi do is they breakdown the dead matter that are
in the forest and create, youknow, turn trees into soil
basically.
So cultivators, mushroomcultivators, usually work with
(10:01):
these saprophytic fungi, andwhat you can do is just take
dead matter, dead plant matter,including straw from grain
farming or sawdust from anindustrial byproduct, from like
a sawmill.
You can take that sawdust orthat straw and then you can grow
(10:22):
fungi on that, grow mycelium onthat, and that's how
cultivators will actually growmushrooms.
So they'll take that biologicalbiomass, they'll pasteurize it
to kill all the living organismsthat are probably already
growing on that and then they'lltake it into a laboratory and
inoculate it with just a littlebit of mycelium.
(10:43):
That gives it free reign overthat substrate to grow Okay.
Diane Bickett (10:47):
So just they need a few spores and the mycelium
just does its thing.
Chris Maurer (10:51):
Yeah, you usually start with either a liquid
culture or what's called grainspawn, and that's mycelium
that's growing on verynutrient-rich grain things like
rice berries or wheat berriesand things like that but that's
mixed in the lab with thesubstrate that's been
pasteurized and then whathappens is the mycelium will
(11:17):
start to create aninterconnected web of material
around all of those particles ofeither sawdust or straw and
kind of connect together, andafter they've fully colonized is
the term that's used for thatthe substrate they will start to
grow the mushrooms.
You usually add a little bit offresh air exchange, you open up
the container that it's growingin so that you get more oxygen
(11:40):
in there, add some humidity tothe room and then the mushrooms
start to fruit because they seethat as the trigger for growing
the reproductive organ, if youwill, which is the mushroom
which releases spores, and sothat's the trigger that makes
that happen.
So you know, this is, you know,well known, it's been done for,
(12:03):
you know, centuries, basicallypeople being able to grow
saprophytic mushrooms on deadmatter like this, and then
usually what happens is thecultivator will harvest those
mushrooms and then they willthrow away what's left over,
which is the mycelium that'sbinding together all of this
woody material that's left over,together, all of this woody
(12:25):
material that's in, you know,leftover.
What we found is that you canuse that for any number of
things.
You can, you know, break it upand reconstitute it in any kind
of shape and it'll form thatshape and you can actually have,
you know, solid objects, likeyou know, you saw the skull that
we've made out of it and wehave some sculptures and some
art that's been made from that.
(12:46):
But if you take that materialand you form it into a brick and
heat and compact that, thenthat's when you get these
stronger materials like we'reshowing here.
That has strength that's verysimilar to concrete.
It's strong as wood.
It has a lot of the sameproperties as wood, which
(13:06):
includes insulation.
It's in many cases we'veactually, you know, isolated
some of the bioperformativeaspects of that, which include
remediation as it's growing, andwe've even you know, we're
working with NASA now on makingspace radiation attenuating
materials out of that too.
(13:27):
One of the things that isreally impressive about the
fungal kingdom is thatmelanin-rich fungi are actually
able to transduct ionizingradiation.
That's the type of radiationyou would find off planet Earth
ionizing radiation so that's thetype of radiation you would
find off planet Earth.
(13:48):
Outside the Earth's magneticshield you'll get X-rays and
gamma rays and particleradiation, which includes
galactic cosmic rays.
We found that the fungalmaterials are very good at
blocking from that because ofthe melanin they produce,
firstly, and then some of theother biochemicals that are
involved in the growth of thefungus.
Diane Bickett (14:06):
Holy cow.
Greg Rotuno (14:07):
Congratulations.
You just said the coolest thingthat's ever been said on this
podcast.
Chris Maurer (14:11):
No doubt Space radiation fungi.
Greg Rotuno (14:15):
Yeah, I have a couple of follow-up questions,
if I may.
Oh absolutely, and I don't knowif Di, if you were going to
talk about this at some point,but what's like the size of the
operation to do, like to producethese materials at scale?
Chris Maurer (14:27):
well, um, so that's a good question because
we're in the process of scalingsome of these projects.
We we have a company in africacalled mycohab that again it's
turning this uh, encroacherspecies, this bush that's
causing desertification innamibia, into both food and
housing.
We're growing mushrooms on thatand we're using the waste from
(14:47):
the mushroom cultivation to makethese very large micro blocks
that, in this case, we'veactually made the world's first
structural building out of thoseblocks, and so we have a staff
of about eight people that areworking there, and you know,
some of some folks are workingon the farm, some folks are
working in the manufacturingpart of that, but we're able to
(15:11):
make enough blocks to do threeor four houses a year with that
type of scale.
What we want to do is get thatto the larger scale, where a lot
of this is more automated.
We have a larger cultivationcenter and a larger
manufacturing center, and thenour hope would be to do dozens,
ideally hundreds, of homes peryear using that, which would be
(15:33):
a further stepping stone todoing thousands and then
eventually licensing thatprocess to others and doing
millions.
The reason why we want this toscale so prolifically is because
there are millions of tons ofbiomass available in Namibia
that need to be thinned from thegrasslands because this bush is
(15:55):
really causing environmentalhavoc there and because 25% of
the population is living ininformal settlements and there's
a huge need for housing.
And the third reason is thesematerials actually store the
carbon dioxide that those thatbush drew down in its you know,
(16:18):
in its growth cycle.
So normally what would happenis people would take this bush
and they would burn it to getrid of it, and that's going to
release that carbon dioxide intothe environment.
Other things you can do with itwill also release that.
Even if it just decays, it'sgoing to release that carbon
dioxide which is going to makeit carbon neutral because it
drew down the CO2, but it'sgoing to release it.
When we store it in buildingmaterials, you actually have a
(16:38):
longer storage of that carbondioxide and you know,
potentially decades, potentiallycenturies, you can store that
CO2 and actually mitigategreenhouse gases.
Buildings are responsible forabout 40% of the world's
greenhouse gases.
If we started adopting theseprocesses that actually store
carbon dioxide, you could seemanufacturing turn the dial the
(17:02):
other direction when it comes toCO2 emissions.
We could actually sequester CO2emissions in the manufacturer
of these products, and that'swhat makes it terribly exciting
for me is the fact that we canleverage again architecture and
construction to have positiveaspects, and that way we kind of
regard it as regenerativearchitecture.
(17:22):
Normally, as I mentioned,buildings are responsible for
40% of the world's greenhousegases.
Concrete, aluminum and steelalone are responsible for 23% of
the greenhouse gases annually,and so switching to these carbon
sequestering processes couldhave a huge impact on the, on
(17:44):
the you know, the buildingindustry's carbon footprint okay
, so how did you have anotherquestion?
Greg Rotuno (17:51):
just one follow-up.
So, like having said all that,is it financially less resource
intensive than traditionalbuilding materials as well?
Chris Maurer (18:01):
Yes.
So right now, you know we're inresearch and development.
There's a lot of cost that goesinto that.
We're working, you know, withresearchers at MIT and Johns
Hopkins and differentuniversities.
So you know that makes it kindof expensive what we're doing
now.
That makes it kind of expensivewhat we're doing now, but the
goal and the business model isthat this will actually be a
(18:23):
cost-negative product orcost-neutral product.
Because in the case of Mycohab,we're producing mushrooms.
Those mushrooms can be sold atmarket and then by the time you
have this material, it'sbasically the waste resource
that comes out of that process.
All you have to do is compactit and let it sit on a shelf and
it's, you know, buildingmaterial the next day.
(18:44):
So it's a very-.
Diane Bickett (18:46):
So making food and housing and Very, very
inexpensive system, sequesteringcarbon, all at the same time.
Chris Maurer (18:51):
Yeah, so in the R&D phase it's not, you know,
exactly cheap at this point, butas we scale it to an industrial
level, that's one of theeconomies of scale you get with.
That is that the mushroom saleswill pay for all of the
building materials, and that'swhy we're kind of looking at a
model where these buildings willbe humanitarian housing.
(19:13):
That's where the need is mostlyin Namibia and then we can
export the mushroom products tothe United States and you can
see a tea on the shelf at thesupermarket.
One of them says we're buildinghouses in Africa, the other one
doesn't.
You might choose the one thatis actually doing the
humanitarian work.
Diane Bickett (19:31):
I love that your office is right next door to
Drink Local Drink Tap Our friendAaron Huber-Rosen, who works in
Uganda, to bring sanitation andwater.
So the Cleveland connection toAfrica is pretty cool.
Chris Maurer (19:45):
Yeah.
Diane Bickett (19:46):
And the innovative things that you're
doing.
So you started your work inNamibia with this project, but
you're from Canton and you're aKent State professor and you're
an architect and now you're amycologist.
I love that story.
How did that all come about?
Give us some background.
Chris Maurer (20:07):
Okay, yeah, as you mentioned, I grew up in Canton.
Then I went to Kent StateUniversity for architecture.
I got my bachelor and master'sdegree there, spent a couple
semesters in Florence, italy,with their program there, spent
a couple semesters in Florence,italy, with their program, and
so that you know, got meinterested in traveling, seeing
the world, learning new, new,you know ways of looking at
(20:28):
architecture.
After graduating I moved to NewYork City and worked at Studio
MDA for Marcus Tohanci, who wasa protege of Zaha Hadid, who's a
very famous Pritzker Prizewinning architect, and so we
were doing lots of differenttypes of designs, a lot of very
(20:53):
interesting and expressivearchitecture for very wealthy
people, impressive architecturefor very wealthy people.
And some of that, some of thearchitecture, was also at the
other end of the scale, where wewere doing humanitarian work.
And one of the projects that Iwas most involved with took me
(21:14):
to Malawi and I was the projectmanager for a school for girls
in Malawi and I lived and workedthere with my at that time
girlfriend currently wife, whereshe was also the landscape
architect project manager onthat project.
And, you know, that's where youknow kind of formed this
(21:36):
concept of working in limitedresources and actually
leveraging them to the best oftheir ability.
When I came back here toCleveland, I started teaching at
Kent State University and wewere working with the Developing
World Studios, where we wereactually spending time talking
(21:57):
with folks in Rwanda and Malawi,and that's kind of where we
developed this concept for usingregarding Cleveland as one of
the limited resourceenvironments as well.
Diane Bickett (22:20):
I'm excited about what you are doing here in
Cleveland because it's got greatpromise for remediating lead
and addressing the dilapidatedbuildings and also growing
literally new buildings.
Explain how mycelium can helpwith Cleveland's lid problem.
Chris Maurer (22:45):
Right.
So when we go into new areas,we're always looking for what is
the, you know, waste productthat we would want to turn into,
you know, new building material.
So in Africa was the the bushwe're, you know, looking at.
We're looking at different waysof actually converting ionizing
radiation, as I mentioned, intobuilding materials when we're
(23:06):
working in space.
But here in Cleveland what wehave is a glut of crumbling
infrastructure.
We have thousands of housesthat are slated for demolition,
um.
There are hundreds of housesthat are torn down, uh every
month and that material, um isis too hard to separate into
(23:27):
constituent parts that could berecycled, um, so a lot of times
it's just put directly intolandfills, which, um?
You know there's 600 milliontons of um, c and D waste that
go into landfills every year,which is mostly turning into
greenhouse gases in thelandfills and causing
environmental damage, becausethere tend to be petrochemicals
(23:50):
in that and even heavy metalswhich are the worst to deal with
.
Diane Bickett (23:56):
Yeah, many of our C&D landfills construction and
demolition debris landfills inour county, cuyahoga County, sit
along the Cuyahoga River.
So, that's just leaching inthere.
Chris Maurer (24:07):
Yeah, and so one of the things that fungi are
actually able to do is toremediate a lot of these toxins.
So with the petrochemicals,things that have very long
molecule chains, these arehydrocarbons that used to be
plants, right, so they're madeof the same building blocks and
the fungi kind of regard that asthe plant material, and what
(24:28):
they do is they break them downinto smaller molecule chains,
which actually makes them safe.
So you turn these long polymersinto smaller monomers and then
they're not dangerous anymore.
So it's a basic remediationprocess that comes from the
fungal digestion.
What they do is the way fungidigest is they secrete enzymes,
and it's an external digestion,and the enzymes actually break
(24:51):
down those chemicals.
When it comes to things likeheavy metals, those are
elemental toxins, so they'rereally hard to deal with, and so
you almost have to do exactlythe opposite, which is to pair
them with longer molecule chains, to take these atomic toxins
like lead or arsenic or cadmiumthat exist in the built
environment, and then the fungican create these different
(25:11):
biochemicals that actually canlatch onto them, which make them
easier to filter, and that'sthe easiest way to extract, that
is, to filter that, or almost.
There's a term called biomining,where these organisms can kind
of seek out those, those metals,and actually extract them, like
, like as if they were miningthat, that material, or the
(25:33):
other thing is to chelate thosematerials.
So these chemicals can actuallylatch onto the chemical, the
elemental toxins like lead, andit makes it so that they're
biologically unavailable, andthat's not just for people, that
includes, you know, vermin.
That would, you know,eventually go up the food chain
if other microbes or, you know,insects, started eating that
(25:56):
material.
And then it went to a bird, toa cat, to, you know, all the way
up the I don't know why she atea fly song.
So to keep that out of the foodweb is very important because,
as you mentioned, when they goto landfill a lot of these
chemicals are just leaching intothe water supply and then
getting back into ourenvironment, and so it's
(26:19):
important to do that regardless.
But what we're able to do withthe biocycler process is to be
able to remediate that and turnthat into useful goods at the
end of the day, because, as Imentioned, the materials are
actually safe at the end of thisprocess and we've done some
studies that it keeps gettingbetter all the time.
(26:39):
And we've done some studiesthat you know it keeps getting
better all the time.
We started with, you know, 30%leachate improvement and the
(26:59):
most recent studies we did wereup to 90% filtration of the lead
particles that were in the C&Dwaste or in the soil waste
before it came out.
So we plan to get to 100%, andthat's kind of the goal here is
that either all of the heavymetals will be completely
extracted from it or the partsthat are left, which are usually
parts per million or even partsper billion very, very trace
elements that aren't dangerouslevels at all, those become
(27:20):
chelated so that if they were tosomehow come into hand-to-mouth
contact with a small child oreven an animal, they wouldn't
get into the bloodstream of thatorganism.
Diane Bickett (27:32):
Okay, so you mentioned the biocycler.
That's a machine or anindustrial process?
Chris Maurer (27:38):
Yeah.
Diane Bickett (27:38):
And where is it?
Do you have like a prototypesomewhere here in Cleveland?
Chris Maurer (27:42):
Yeah, it's a process, more than anything.
And so it's basically verysimilar to what we're doing in
Namibia, where we're using, youknow, fungi to create new
materials, but instead of foodand housing in this regard, it's
the remediation and housing.
And you know Cleveland, we havefour times the incidence of
(28:02):
lead poisoning here in Cleveland.
So we kind of consider this,you know, ground zero for the
need for this type of work.
And in the same way that youknow, the burning of the
Cuyahoga was the impetus for theClean Air and Water Act and for
the creation of the EPA theClean Air and Water Act and for
(28:24):
the creation of the EPA we'rehoping that people will see the
need here in Cleveland and lookinto these types of processes
that can actually be the impetusfor dealing with this problem.
Diane Bickett (28:34):
And what organizations are you working
with in Cleveland?
Chris Maurer (28:37):
Right.
So, yeah, we're very fortunateto have a lot of, you know,
grassroots foundations and somesupport that we're working with.
The Black Environmental LeadersAssociation is one.
Collective Citizens OrganizedAgainst Lead, or CEQL, is
another one, and so, you know,we've teamed up on a lot of
processes along with CaseWestern Reserve University and
(29:01):
even folks at Johns HopkinsUniversity, where we're doing
the scientific research thatproves the system, but also
trying to scale the processes tothe industrial level, where we
could be building houses, likewe're doing in Africa, using the
same processes.
Diane Bickett (29:18):
So humanitarian architecture in Africa and in
Cleveland.
Chris Maurer (29:22):
Yeah.
Diane Bickett (29:22):
That's cool.
So tell us what you're doing onMars.
I did say on planet and offplanet.
Chris Maurer (29:29):
Yeah, so we're working with NASA through the
NIAC program, which is NASAInnovative Advanced Concepts,
and this is kind of agame-changing technology program
to develop habitats that cangrow themselves off planet.
Diane Bickett (29:46):
Whoa, how does that happen?
Chris Maurer (29:47):
So the way we're proposing it now is that there
is an inflatable structure thatwould fill up with gases to kind
of inflate into a building onthe moon or Mars, but the outer
shell of that fills with waterand different nutrients.
That then would activate someliving organisms we have in
(30:09):
these small bioreactors thatlink together.
And these bioreactors, youcould think of them as like
cells in a living organism, butyou could also think of them
like bricks in a dome, and sothey link up together and as
they grow they turn into thesehard materials like you see in
front of you now or that yourlisteners can hear that become
(30:32):
the outer shell of that, and sothey have this.
You know, bio performativeability to shield from radiation
that I mentioned earlier.
This is a concept calledradiosynthesis or radiotropism,
that is able to transduceionizing radiation into benign
forms of energy, which includeheat, which are very useful on
(30:53):
cold planets anyway, and they'reable to insulate as well
(31:15):
gravity and a pressurized vesselthat you're living in.
You're actually designing aballoon rather than something
that needs to deal with weatherand gravity.
So the tensile fabrics that areinvolved with the inflatable
are the things that are actuallythe structure of the building,
and then the bio-terials thatgrow within those do the other
(31:37):
things that the building needs,and the main things are the
thermal insulation, because youhave very hot and very cold
environments on the moon andMars, and then you also need
that radiation protection, andthat radiation is actually the
biggest showstopper right nowfor missions to the moon.
We've had 12 people on the moon.
(31:58):
You know, we've had 12 peopleon the moon and all of them were
very lucky to not get a hugeradiation dose from.
You know a solar event thathappened.
Never thought about that.
The longest stay on the moonwas, you know, 72 hours or so,
75 hours, I think, and they justmissed a solar wind event that
could have been deadly for themnot immediately, but could have
led to cancer down the line.
Diane Bickett (32:21):
Wow, so these would just grow themselves.
Essentially, when you get themthere, probably cheaper than
sending construction materialsto Mars.
Chris Maurer (32:33):
We joke that you just grow your own house, just
add water.
Because the thing is it costs alot of money to send anything
even to low Earth orbit, as wedo with the space station, to
get things to Mars.
You know, some estimates are$100,000.
Some are, you know, a milliondollars to get a pound of
(32:53):
material.
So that's a can of soda.
You know it costs a milliondollars to get that, at least to
Mars it'll cost more than thatprobably.
And so to be able to send justgrams of material that then grow
into tons of material by addingwater which you source on the
moon or Mars, you're savingtrillions of dollars potentially
(33:15):
.
And so that that was the firstreason that that I think NASA
was interested in this idea.
And then the other thing is thespace radiation protection that
you can get from thesebioperformative materials which
we're constantly testing.
We've sent some materials tothe space station already and
they were flown on the outsideof the space station for six
(33:36):
months at a time, and then webring them back and we see what
kind of degradation they had.
Some materials don't make itback because of the radiation
dosage, because of the atomicoxygen that they receive there,
but our materials came back withvery superficial damage to them
.
There were micrometeoroids,which are basically tiny little
(33:58):
bullets that are flying throughspace all the time, actually
embedded in the materials, sothey were able to stop that.
Diane Bickett (34:04):
So did you go to NASA to see this?
Did you get to see the?
Chris Maurer (34:10):
Well, yeah, they were done here in Cleveland at
NASA Glenn.
They were packaged here, thensent down to Houston where they
did some more check-in and sometesting and things like that.
They won't just send anythingto space.
So there's, you know, kind ofsome rattling testing and some
outgassing testing and thingslike that.
They make sure that they're notjust going to explode into
(34:32):
space.
And then they were, you know,launched from the East Coast
somewhere I forget exactly wherethey were launched from In an
uncrewed mission and then thematerials were met by the folks
on the space station and we havesome photographs of the
astronauts there kind ofunpacking them, and we also have
(34:54):
photographs of them on theoutside of the space station and
you can actually see theatmosphere of the Earth in the
background of some of thesephotos and it's really just
stunning.
Diane Bickett (35:03):
So they haven't come back yet?
No, they have.
They have yeah.
Chris Maurer (35:07):
I got some some of the cutoffs here, but they're
currently at the University ofAkron.
They're doing some testingthere.
Dr Ali Dineshwala and his teamare looking at them because he
does research into melanin and,as I mentioned, melanin is
probably the biochemical withinthese fungal organisms that does
(35:28):
the most in the space radiationproduction, and we're also
working with a researcher atJohns Hopkins University,
rodames Cordero, who is also anexpert in melanin production and
melanin studies, and so they'reboth looking at this and
writing the papers.
I just get to help make thesamples.
Diane Bickett (35:53):
I don't write the papers web because you're, I
mean it's, it's just reachingout into so many places and and
into so many researchinstitutions and nasa, and it's
just, yeah, it absolutely is Imeet a lot of fun guys and fun
gals.
I was waiting for a fun joke,gotcha I feel like mushrooms are
(36:16):
having their moment too, withfood and coffee and all that
stuff we talked about.
I'm looking at a packet of teayou gave me from Four Sigmatic.
It's made from reishi mushrooms.
So many benefits to the humanbody to consume.
We're finding anyway to consumeLion's Mane for you.
(36:39):
You said mental clarity, andthen what were some of the other
?
Chris Maurer (36:44):
Well, yeah, can we ?
Diane Bickett (36:45):
leave some parting thoughts on how
individuals can get acquainted.
Chris Maurer (36:49):
Oh, absolutely yeah.
So Four Sigmatic is one,mudwater is another.
Those are kind of higher-endproducts where they have
different adaptogenic organismsor different adaptogenic
mushrooms and plants.
Diane Bickett (37:03):
And what does that mean adaptogenic?
Chris Maurer (37:06):
It's basically any kind of food that has a
positive medical process.
That happens so with the reishiand the turkey tail, which are
two types of mushrooms that gointo teas.
They have a lot oftriterpenoids and beta-glucans
(37:31):
and these are biochemicals thatwhen they're in your body they
kind of mimic the effect ofbeing sick.
They don't make you sick, butit tells your immune system to
hey, wake up there.
You know there's something inhere that you need to address,
and then that actually is kindof a workout for your immune
(37:51):
system, and so they'reconsidered immune system
boosting chemicals that comenaturally from those mushrooms.
There are some claims aroundlion's mane of stimulating brain
power.
They look like little brains,so that's good too, but yeah.
I think we all need some of thatI'm sure the reishi is also
(38:16):
considered to help with sleeping.
So that's one I do for sure,and there are some studies
around turkey tail actuallybeing helpful, along with
whatever your doctor recommendsfor cancer treatment, and it may
(38:37):
or may not be directly relatedto the cancer or just helping
you feel better as you gothrough cancer treatment, but
there's, you know, a lot oftheories on that and a lot of
research on that and it's, youknow, definitely worth looking
into and trying if you're into,you know, some of these
adaptogenic or homeopathic.
You know methods of you knowtreating your body.
Diane Bickett (39:01):
Do you think the medical community is coming
along when it comes to accepting?
Chris Maurer (39:07):
Absolutely, I think the fungal kingdom.
Absolutely, and I think you knowa lot of it has to do with the
psychedelics and there is reallygreat research at Johns Hopkins
now around the psychedelicsbeing a treatment for depression
, for addiction and other thingslike that.
And so you know it's medicallystudied and you know very clear
(39:32):
benefits that come from that.
And it's not just, you know,tripping on your own.
It's part of a process that youdo with doctors and there's a,
you know, a speaking part tothat too and like a therapy part
that goes along with it.
(39:53):
A lot of great documentariesabout that treating PTSD.
Adaptogenic things that Imentioned, like the, you know,
the triterpenoids and thebeta-glucans and all of those
chemicals are scientificallyproven to do certain things that
can be very useful if usedcorrectly and if you need them.
Diane Bickett (40:10):
Yeah, well, if you need your brain rewired.
Chris Maurer (40:13):
Yeah.
Diane Bickett (40:15):
Well, this has been fascinating.
Greg, do you have any finalquestions?
Greg Rotuno (40:19):
No, I've been holding my jaw up the whole time
on the floor if I wasn't.
Yeah, this has been fascinating, Greg.
Do you have any final questions?
No, I've been holding my jaw upthe whole time because it would
be on the floor if I wasn't.
Yeah, this is I'm enamored.
Diane Bickett (40:27):
Yeah, super interesting.
So I'd like to cover this againwith some mycologists and maybe
do some foraging, who knows?
Well, thank you so much.
Chris Maurer (40:38):
Chris.
Diane Bickett (40:39):
Do you want to?
Chris Maurer (40:41):
Yeah, when it comes to foraging, I can
recommend.
You know, we're right upstairsfrom Larder Delicatessen right
now and Jeremy Umansky leadsforaging classes out of Larder,
so check them out too if that'ssomething you want to get into.
And I was just down there.
He had some golden oystermushrooms which are.
They're beautiful and it'sgoing to be on the menu this
(41:04):
week, so stop by.
Diane Bickett (41:05):
Oh cool, I'm so glad you mentioned that.
Well, we will.
Greg Rotuno (41:09):
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak
CLE.
You can find our full catalogof episodes on Spotify, apple
Podcasts or wherever you getyour podcasts Apple Podcasts or
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