Strategies for living textile architectures.
The urgent need for a more sustainable built environment is leading researchers to investigate biohybrid strategies utilizing living materials within composite material systems. Mycelium, the root network of fungus, has been successfully developed as a binder in the production of bulk composite elements, grown as bricks or other preforms. Research undertaken by our group is focused on the biocompatibility of knitted fabrics as a scaffold for growth, highlighting the potential to tune material properties and create complex forms using textile fibres, yarns, and fabrics as a hierarchical structuring system.
Alongside developments in mycelium BioKnit composites, our group is investigating the potential for bacterial cellulose knit composites. Bacterial cellulose is a form of cellulose produced by certain kinds of bacteria, and is of interest to the building sector because there is established manufacturing capability via industrial fermentation processes. Whilst commercial applications have been focused on the food industry (Nata de Coco is a well know South-East Asian food), the ability to synthesize functionalised cellulose from microbes has great potential within construction.
The public nature of the OME provides the unique opportunity for both public engagement and control of “real-world” interactions with the material samples applied in typical settings of the built environment, enabling social science qualitative data on aesthetic perceptions and cultural responses to the intersection of novel biotechnology with traditional construction materials and its place in the built environment.
