185. Brick Happens: Chris Maurer of Redhouse Studio Redesigns Remote Living for Earth and Mars

Chris imagine a air mattress that you, fold up, but instead of going into a mattress shape, it goes into a building shape.

Erum Carl Albert Schmeider, how you doing?

Karl Everything's going good, Iram Aziz Khan. Welcome to the Grow Everything podcast, where we talk about how people are using biology as technology to transform the world. There's a lot going on. New York City is euphoric after the Knicks have won two games. Iram, I think you might have been more excited about this than I am, but I have definitely felt it.

Erum Yeah. I feel it because everyone around me feels it, and so it's really hard not to get wrapped up in the excitement. I'm, I'm from Philadelphia, don't hold that against me. but I understand the feeling of fans when their teams are succeeding, and here we are, and I'm very excited about it.

Erum I just love the vibe, the energy that's in the city today. There's a game this evening. I'm [00:01:00] wearing my orange and blue to represent the Knicks. Sorry, 76ers, but here we are.

Karl So by the time this goes live, which will be at the end of this week, we will know at least what has happened in three of the games.

Karl So far, New York has won two of the games, And, New York fans, of course, are hoping that the Knicks sweep it. so I'll wish the, Knicks luck today. And hopefully on Friday when this airs, they'll have won or will continue to be in the running.

Erum Yeah.

Erum Yeah. And I was watching the game, and I was looking at all the different sponsors that had their logos, across the different, screens and the box seats. And did you notice that there was a box seat sponsored by Lilly? Like, Lilly is a big sponsor of these games.

Karl Well, it doesn't surprise me.

Karl They're the first trillion-dollar pharmaceutical company, right?

Erum Yeah. Yeah, that happened, just a few days ago as of this recording. And this is something that we were talking about, several episodes ago because we've been seeing the trillion-dollar [00:02:00] tech companies, and we're like, "Okay, that's great.

Erum When are we gonna get to the trillion-dollar biotech company?" And here we are. So congratulations to Lilly. I'm not surprised with the success of, Zepbound and Mounjaro. Those are the equivalents of Ozempic and Wegovy. it's been very successful. and the company based in Indiana.

Erum Lilly is based in Indianapolis. We had Senator Todd Young on, Indiana being a great biotech hub. But wow, this is like we're here. We're here in the, trillion dollar is now the benchmark for biotech. So let's go. Let's figure this out.

Karl I'm very excited about that because it just shows, the potential of biopharma to make a huge impact on the world.

Karl and speaking of huge impact on the world, and also going back to the Knicks in New York City, last week we- was New York Tech Week. So there was a lot of events that were going on. Iram, do you wanna go through what we participated in?

Erum Yeah, absolutely. There was, a lot of them. I feel like, I wanna say [00:03:00] 1,000.

Erum I was just hearing stories about it. this whole Tech Week was, sponsored or created by a16z, which is Andreessen Horowitz Fund, and they really rallied this community of tech and biotech and everything that's tangential to technology to set up events. And it was real interesting because all these events were set up in Partiful, which is not my favorite.

Erum I love Luma. So anyway, these are event platforms, which was very interesting to me. But yeah, there were a lot, and we attended and participated and hosted a couple. The first one we went to was Compound VC's Idea Factory, which was a cool take on having a networking event. And so how this worked was that, the invites went out, and in order to, RSVP to the event, you had to add an idea, around biotech that's transformative that you think is going to be a great, part of a conversation, an idea that will transform the world.

Erum And so, you [00:04:00] RSVP'd, I RSVP'd, and a whole bunch of, bunch of people did. And it was at Compound's offices, which I had never been to, so it was really cool. our friend, Dr. Shelby Nusad, is a, partner at...

Erum Compound VC and organized all of this.

Erum And it was cool because when we first got there, it was light networking, and then everyone went around the room and shared their idea. so then you can, you connect with those people that have ideas that you're interested in. And what was your idea, Carl? Do you wanna share it?

Karl my idea, probably no surprise, is, uh, database of all- terran microorganisms or all terran organisms.

Karl And, you know, it's not an original idea. It's like we talked about the living libraries with Senator Young. our friend Ginger Dozier has been working on a global microbial atlas. We, just had Henry Lee of Cultivarium on, and I just think that it's a really useful database to have. So I'm gonna continue pushing for that.

Karl I thought it was great. What was your idea, Ram?

Erum My idea comes from the world of space and [00:05:00] all of the innovators in that world, and this idea of, genetic engineering humans to withstand generational space travel.

Karl Yes. Um,

Erum think that that's really important to strive for, because you'll learn how to genetically engineer humans for just living healthy and longer lives here on Earth, which is, a lot of space innovation has a lot of benefits here on Earth, which we will talk about more in today's episode.

Erum but then after that, which was a great event, the next day we had our big event, which was a live demo of Robling, which is an AI process engineer that was created by, The company was formerly Synonym, and now it's Robling, and that was great. It was at, NYU Tandon. and they have this, building space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard called Tandon at the Yard, which has all this advanced production equipment and this huge LED screen, which was, like, beautiful to see our [00:06:00] logos and then the demo behind us.

Erum we're gonna have that episode air next week. But what did you think, Carl? This was something that we were working, very hard on, and our, teams and everyone came together. Tell me what you think.

Karl Yeah, I mean, I think the recording and, what we end up publishing is gonna be great.

Karl It was a little intimidating the first few times we walked into this space because it is this humongous screen. It's a dark room. They do a lot of things, like they do motion capture. and it is like a learning tech lab, so they've got the newest gadgets in there. it was pointed out that one of the motion capture rooms is where they did parts of the A$AP Rocky helicopter video, so that was really cool.

Karl But, it was well attended. the demo, succeeded without a glitch. Software demos can go very poorly, and doing it in front of a live audience was risky. But I heard from a lot of people that they really enjoyed it, that it went really well. So audience, please watch that episode and let us know what you think.

Karl But it was great. And then, Iram, you went to a couple of other events, and I just remembered that I went to another event at the [00:07:00] beginning of the week, and all these events were super packed with people. Like, I went to this AI design event, which is kind of outside of my realm, but I wanted to be around designers who are using AI.

Karl You went to a Longevity Global Summit. How well attended was that?

Erum Yeah. Yeah, that was great. it was a two-day summit. I saw a lot of familiar faces and, I was asked to moderate a fireside chat with Danyal Hussain, who is the executive director of technology business development at GlaxoSmithKline.

Erum Um, and I've known him for quite some time, maybe about four years, and it was cool because since we knew each other, we could have a very casual conversation. I think it's very much appreciated when, the speakers before us were really going deep into, the g- genetics and, know, mitochondrial repair, and it was getting very, very dense.

Erum And then Danyal and I come on and we talk more high level about the business of, longevity and what that means for pharma and what, their approaches are. a lot of [00:08:00] longevity therapies happen on accident, right? Like the GLP-1s designed for diabetes, had a second life in weight loss, and now there are these effects that are promoting, reduction in dementia, reduction in cardiovascular disease, and, the list goes on.

Erum And there are other, therapies that they've invested in that are, for age-related diseases, but age-related diseases are those diseases that are, if you resolve them, can help you live longer, and then go into the realm of longevity. So the conversation was like how much of that is intentional versus accidental?

Erum And a lot of it is still, like, not accidental, but they are making bets towards age-related diseases and then, if it's safe and effective and people wanna use it proactively, that's for the market to determine, and it was great. But yeah, I wish you were there. You would've loved it.

Karl I didn't go because I was recording a podcast episode I'm just excited not just about the longevity drugs that are being developed, [00:09:00] but also the business models that are gonna emerge, because I think you're gonna need different kinds of business models.

Karl And the impact on society if people are able to live longer is gonna be profound. So this kind of, convergence of AI, biotech, longevity, how's it gonna affect society? I think it's stuff we all need to think about. You had one more event on Saturday, so Tech Week was really full for you. What was your Saturday event, Iram?

Erum The Saturday event was really nice. It was, with the organization called Minds Matter, and they support high school students and college students, help them with their careers that, they might need some more guidance. they might not be getting the, access to the right guidance, so they join this organization to speak with different people across different careers.

Erum it's really interesting because I spoke with the Minds Matter executive director, and they're like, " we have a lot of people in finance and law." So she was really happy that, I was joining to do this because, I come from the world of STEM and sciences, so it gives the students there more [00:10:00] breadth of what happens and how do you enter these careers.

Erum And I was invited, by, one of my fellow Merck Digital, Science Studios advisor, Matt Doherty, who's, multiple exited entrepreneur. He's a developer of, software and AI, and he's sold a couple companies. And then also David Charone of Wilson Sonsini, who works in the life sciences space, helps with, different corporate law- And we know each other, so we had a very, again, casual conversations. Nice. I think they're the most effective conversations.

Karl Absolutely.

Erum Yes, and it was very real. The students were asking us all sorts of questions about AI. But then they were asking a lot of questions about how do you start a company? What is that like? What do you need to do? Where do we get started? And, you know, I pointed them to the direction of accelerator programs, going to networking events, and just having this conversation. link with me on LinkedIn," and, and it was great. It was a Saturday morning, very casual, and it was a great wrap to the craziness of New York Tech [00:11:00] Week.

Karl I find it fascinating that the kids are interested in entrepreneurship. I know that it's a tough job market out there. We've mentioned that my son, Tomas, graduated from Cornell a couple weeks ago. Several of his friends are looking for jobs. it's been a challenge, and so I think a lot of smart, savvy, ambitious, students are looking at entrepreneurship, and they should be. when you're in your 20s, you should be able to take some big risks and fail or succeed, and anything you learn when you start a company is going to translate to everything you do later in life. there is no better teaching, experience than starting a company and making it succeed or fail.

Erum Yeah, and I think the biggest thing we talked about was, like, building relationships. And there was this graphic that if I find it, I'll have to share it, but it was this pyramid, and it was, the AI value goes up the pyramid, and the bottom of it was, like, infrastructure and, all the, like, data [00:12:00] centers and everything. And then there was the, model layer. Then there was the application layer, and then at, at the top was relationships and brand and, data, like degenerating data, from, like, the real world. So I loved this because the defensible moats are now people and relationships and brand. And I cannot stress that, enough because it is the most important. If you build it, will they come? Well, they will come if you have a relationship with them. Yeah.

Karl Yeah. You know?

Erum And if you have a brand, if you're ex- exciting and if you're enthusiastic about it. and I think it's really important. I think it also might be a challenge for some people who, are technical, but if you align yourself with others that do have that, je ne sais quoi, you know-

Erum like, that special something that can, help bring people together, help people see the value in what you're building and then, the loyalty and coming back and the value exchange. I just love seeing that because, I was saying that [00:13:00] what were soft skills are now the hard skills.

Karl That's right. absolutely right. I agree with that. Now that we've covered Tech Week, why don't we get into the transition to our, interview today. did you see this article, Urmim, I know I shared it with you, from The New Yorker on the impact of the warming planet on microbes?

Erum yeah. I haven't read it, but tell me more about it.

Karl Well, so it should be no surprise that, microbes are adapting very quickly to climate change, and as a result, there's diseases that are appearing in new places where they didn't exist before. And the article actually starts with a guy who's, in New England, maybe even in Maine, and he scrapes his arm on a nail, and he gets infected by this flesh-eating bacteria.

Karl It's horrifying. The article is horrifying, and it talks about flesh-eating bacteria, fungi who are now able to enter the body more easily, ancient pathogens that are appearing from the permafrost, and how we as humans are scrambling to keep up with this stuff. Like, [00:14:00] it's pretty scary, and it's amazing, and it's just a reminder that microbes are who runs the planet.

Karl we think we do, but we are, I think, woefully unprepared for what's in front of us.

Erum Yeah. Okay. Well, that's kinda scary. And yeah, you know what? The whole thing is Every action has a reaction, right? us as humans have been very aggressively industrializing and extracting resources and polluting, and there has to be a response from life, from microbes, from, other animals to, protect themselves.

Erum we're all interconnected. We're all from DNA. So, It comes as no surprise. But, for this extreme response, we need to have extreme biodesign- Yes ... and extreme, solutions to be able to protect ourselves without really, disrupting the balance of things, right?

Erum So that's the thing. It's like, do we eradicate all of these fungi? And, well, will they come back with a vengeance, become even more [00:15:00] powerful? Like, this is a whole thing with antimicrobial resistance as well. so I wonder about that, and I just hope that we continue to have solutions and we understand where we need to stop damaging the planet or stop doing what we're doing so we don't get this response of, these tropical diseases coming up north because, the world is warming and our environment up here in New York is warming.

Erum Or Hopefully We have the tools now. we have everything. We have everything to solve everything. We just need to have the will and the, focus and the drive to solve it, and we need everyone politically, industrially, societally to come together. I don't know if societally is a word, but I'm going to make it a word.

Erum Societally ... but I think this is a great segue to our guest today.

Karl Yeah, you mentioned extreme biodesign, and so our guest today is Chris Maurer, and Chris is the founder of MycoHab [00:16:00] and Red House Architecture. We first saw Chris at BioFabricate in New York City in 2022, I think before we started the podcast, but he's been on our list for a long time because he's doing some really interesting things with fungi.

Karl He uses them to shape the built environment, that is the environment we live in. He's shown that mycelium is stronger than concrete, and he's shown what is possible in space. So I think with that, let's let Chris take it away

Karl Chris Maurer of Red House Studio, we are so happy to welcome you to the Grow Everything podcast.

Chris Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Karl So, Iram and I both saw you present at BioFabricate in New York probably six years ago, if it's that long ago. I think it's four. Four? Well, it feels like longer.

Karl Okay. So we first saw you at BioFabricate about four years ago here in New York City, and ever [00:17:00] since then, and after we started the podcast, you were one of the people that's been on our list for a really long time because your presentation was just so inspiring and I'm so excited to be able to talk to you about the work that you do at Red House Studio.

Karl So just to give some background, your journey goes from Cleveland to Namibia. You have done collaborations with NASA. But what was the turning point for you where architecture has shifted from designing buildings to designing buildings that grow, decay, and can even feed people?

Chris yeah, thank you.

Chris That's a great question. I would say, yeah, the trajectory has been from Cleveland to Namibia with a detour to the moon

Chris One of the ways we look at that, but I would say it was actually the work in Africa was pivoting for us. It was instrumental in

Chris the ethos that we've developed around regenerative architecture and, as you may be aware, in Africa, necessity is the mother of invention.

Chris There's a great need to leverage, [00:18:00] very few resources to make as much impact as possible. And so, given that opportunity to work there, to absorb that ethos, to, develop my own thoughts about that and I had some great mentors while I was, there in, including, the architects I was working with in New York and London and, throughout the world, but, specifically in Malawi and Rwanda, picking up these, ideas about how you can take these limited resources and leverage them to the greatest effect possible.

Chris And, uh, having that experience and coming back here to the, developed world, or, you know, some might say the overdeveloped world or redeveloping world, as sometimes we look at it, you know, is, instrumental to understand that we're always in this limited resource environment. So there, it's, very, present every day, psychology and, the way that one lives their life.

Chris but when we're here, we externalize a lot of the, the effects of what we do such that we don't realize that we're using up precious little resources and, and, using them, [00:19:00] ineffectively or, inefficiently. So the ability to have that life lesson working in Africa, coming back here, and trying to leverage that every day is kinda what formed our thoughts about architecture and the desire to make it regenerativesustainability is one thing, but, you know, I've always wanted to be in a place where, architecture creates, more opportunity than it takes.

Karl And I just wanna ask a quick follow-up questionwhat was the trajectory from Malawi to Namibia, and then what's it look like on the ground for those of us who've never been there? Like Iram was just in South Africa over Christmas. I picture lush valleys and mountains, and Namibia is a little bit more of a mystery except for like the, Skull Coast or the Ivory Coast? what do they call that?

Chris Skele-Skeleton Coast in Namibia. Yeah. you know, I grew up in Northeast Ohio, worked for a little while in Cleveland, and then, moved to New York City.

Chris I followed a girl there. she ended up becoming my wife, so it was a good choice. But, followed her there as she was going through [00:20:00] graduate school, and I worked at a firm called Studio MDA, which was, founded by Marcus Dohani. He was a, protege of Zaha Hadid, who's the, you know, very famous, first woman to win the, the Pritzker Prize and a fantastic architect.

Chris And so I kinda acknowledge her as my, grand mentor or my grandmother mentor. I don't know how you you say that, but, he was a protege of hers and, and, I was a protege of his. And we had a project in Malawi, and this was actually a project for Madonna, the, pop singer. and she was trying to replicate what Oprah Winfrey had done in South Africa to build a school for girls and to empower women to, become the future leaders their economy and of the-their, country.

Chris and so what we found when we got to, Malawi, we were, Again, this is a limited resource environment, and necessity is the mother of, of invention there. Uh, we were looking at ways that we could leverage these limited resources, and that included things like the earth that was below our feet at the time.

Chris So we were doing a lot with earth construction [00:21:00] and, the idea there is that you take soil at the right, mixture and the right moisture content, and you compact it, either using machines or in many cases these mechanical presses that use human labor to make, building materials that are not necessarily as strong as concrete, but a much, better environmental footprint and r- you know, requires a lot of labor, but very little in the terms of resources.

Chris And this becomes fantastic opportunity to not only, not use our, non-renewables and our renewable resources, but to create economic development as you're doing this. So, when we, did some projects in, Rwanda years later, we would look at this equation with MASS Design Group that the concept was that, one bulldozer could equal 1,000 jobs.

Chris you could provide all of these jobs and, create economic impact and, hiring unemployed people to do, the type of work that normally here in the developed world we would just hire a machine for. looking at that in, terms of creating impact people's everyday lives and [00:22:00] looking at in terms of taking material that is maybe considered, not very useful or even a waste material, and converting that into something that's, great for, building, that's the type of thing that just got the wheels turning and eventually, turned into this, concept that we call regenerative architecture, where we're taking specifically waste material and leveraging that to great effect to make multifunctional materials and potentially even, feed people or to, regenerate land as we're making, architecture.

Chris So, it starts sustainability or leveraging these limited resources, and it, grows all the way to leveraging them to the effect that we're actually repairing the planet as we're building with that.

Erum there's this very powerful idea in your work, and, you mentioned that buildings can be grown from waste while feeding people and restoring carbon.

Erum When did that system click for you as not just possible, but necessary?

Chris We've developed that over time. and you know, it started with, looking at this earth construction and literally building from the, [00:23:00] um, earth below our feet and turning that into buildings.

Chris So sculpting the land and turning that into architecture. and then from there, I think I was introduced to the concept of mycotecture and the art of, Phil Ross, who had, done some sculptures where he called it the Tea House, and this was this sculpture where it was, shaped as an arch, and it was living mycelium that was growing mushrooms, and the mushrooms were, harvested right there in the gallery and used to make tea.

Chris not only is there's this sculpture here, but you have the opportunity to, take that food material or that, adaptogenic product and turn that into, something that, is consumable right there. and you know, as an architect, I wanted to see how far one could go with that and, That was a, beautiful installation and an example, I think, of the genesis of mycotecture, generally. But I, you know, wanted to see could this turn into permanent structure, and started experimenting with, mycelium myself and, learned how to cultivate mushrooms. And then, the thing that clicked for me, I think, was that there [00:24:00] was these, companies that were growing mycelium, to make materials, things like packaging that Ecovada was doing and the leather goods that, MycoWorks was doing.

Chris but they weren't cultivating the, food product, at the same time. And having learned how one does this, I was working with a lot of cultivators, and they're growing the food product, and they're throwing away that other part, which is the mycelium. and so the thing that clicked is why can't we do both at the same time?

Chris Can these be vertically integrated, and can we create food and housing at the same time? And that was the, big light bulb that went off, and we, designed this as a concept and we started, talking to people with this, looking for partners. And, we arrived at, MIT is, was one of the partners that was very interested in this, and they brought in Standard Bank Group, which is, Africa's largest bank.

Chris and having conceived this as an idea for, refugee, settlements where you're providing food and jobs and architecture and regenerating land as you're doing that, [00:25:00] they saw that as a great opportunity for, lifting up the, people in the countries they work in, which is over 20 Sub-Saharan African countries.

Chris and so we teamed up on the, project, and we wanted to demonstrate that, and that's what turned into our project called MycoHab.

Karl And what does that look like when someone sees or touches, or is standing in inside of one of these structures that's grown from mycelium?

Chris Very good question.

Chris So yeah, with MycoHab, what that turned into was a, project where we turned, 12 tons of this unwanted invasive species of bush into the substrate for growing mushrooms. That got converted into three tons of mushrooms that were used to feed people, and then we took the byproduct of that to make the, building materials.

Chris So this is the, mycelium, or a lot of people think of that as the root structure of the mushrooms. that's a good way to think of it as an analogy. We can go into, specifics on how that's totally incorrect, but, let's just think of that as the roots of the mushrooms, and that's binding together this, ground-up bush materials, which is [00:26:00] sawdust.

Chris And so together they form this, composite material that we say is the best of both kingdoms, 'cause you have the plant material that is strong, and then you have this, mycelium material that creates a ductile glue that holds that all together to create a, composite material and then that was put into a press, and we pressed and baked that into these, bricks that are, stronger than concrete.

Chris So we built, a structure out of that, and what does that look and feel like? So it, very earthy in the sense that it, comes mostly from the plant material that goes into that. but then it has this mycelial glue that's holding everything together.

Chris some expectations you might have from that is, the smell is very earthy, and it's, something that, I challenge people to tell me what it smells like, when they smell the material. It's, it's very woody in my estimation.

Chris But, inevitably everyone has a different answer, and liken it to that, magic potion in Harry Potter where everyone smells their favorite thing when they smell it. because, the answers that people give me are, completely disparate from, like waffles [00:27:00] and, syrup all the way to, licorice all the way, to, you know, it smells like wood.

Chris what are you talking about? because it is mostly wood, but it has this, natural glue that's holding that together. if I wanna set the aromatherapy of that. When you touch it, I'm gonna describe it, and I know you have some, viewers, but for the listener, it has a- about the weight of a woody material.

Chris So it, the density of wood is about 0.6 grams per cubic centimeter. so anything less than one, gram per cubic centimeter is gonna float in water, 'cause that's the density of water. maybe the microphone will pick up the sound when I knock on that. And so it sounds exactly like wood.

Chris It feels exactly like wood. And again, we point to it as the best of both kingdoms, 'cause it's mostly this woody material, that becomes the substrate of that. But this mycelial glue, has the benefit of forming, things like a leathery finish that we have on that, because it creates a skin on the outside of that.

Chris And when we heat and compact that, it's basically like having, woody material that [00:28:00] whenyou look at it in cross-section, it has that graining to it of compacted, particles. but then when you look at the surface of that where the, skin of the, fungal organism is meeting that, the heat and compaction, it turns into a leathery finish.

Chris So as a fungus, it's halfway between a plant and animal. And so it creates that skin, and you get this beautiful leathery, texture that, in many cases we can actually tune that and create, different, variegation, to the materials. You can see maybe behind me there's a, a mock-up of a, panel where we have these, tessellated, units that are, fitting together, and you can see the variegation in that.

Chris It's the same way that you get variegation with brickwork, which- whichever bricks are closer to the fire, tend to be darker. The same thing happens with this material. the fungal species actually creates a lot of that, texture and that finish to it, but also the heat and the pressure that goes into it can, tune that as well.

Erum Wow. Yeah, thank you for that beautiful description. And, you know, you mentioned [00:29:00] th- MycoTech... We're calling them MycoBricks?

Chris Yeah. Depends on the size. So, you know, with the small ones we, call them MycoBricks. with Namibia, when they were, you know, these cubic foot, blocks that we made- Mm

Chris we call them the MycoBlocks. And then, we're moving into a scenario now that's like a more of a slab, technology. So, a working title is MycoSlab.

Karl Amazing.

Erum It, yeah, makes sense. and you said they're, stronger than concrete, but also much more lightweight, which is also a very interesting benefit to the material, to the bricks, the slab, and the blocks.

Chris Yeah, absolutely. And, we have all of the, the scientific data that's behind these claims about the strength of the material and compression, you know, bending and, different, uh, laboratory tests that happen. But where it really hits home for people is we have this, video of, of my friend, Pendapala in Namibia hitting, a concrete block with a sledgehammer, and then the next frame over you see him hitting one of these MycoBlo- Blocks with a sledgehammer.

Chris And, the concrete block just shatters into pieces. It's a very [00:30:00] brittle material. and then the MycoBlock is able to absorb that impact. So, you know, that's very advantageous if you have a psychopath with a sledgehammer that's trying to get into your building. but that's not why we did the demonstration.

Chris It's more to mimic, the type of impact you get in a, seismic activity when earthquakes are moving buildings and they're smashing into each other. you get a lot of this impact, that happens with that. And so concrete is very famously brittle and heavy, which is disastrous in seismic events, and that's why there's so much loss of life in buildings that are, built with concrete, especially in the developing world where they're not built very well.

Chris But when you have a ductile material like wood, or in this case, the Myco, materials, which are mostly wood, you have that impact resistance 'cause they're able to absorb the impact from that, and they, can sway in their, ductile, which is exactly what you want in a seismic event.

Chris you may have some damage to the building, and you may eventually have to tear it down, but you're able to escape the building to do that assessment. whereas with, [00:31:00] concrete, a lot of times unfortunately that's not an option when it, pancakes and, crushes the inhabitants.

Erum Yeah. Wow.

Erum And I remember seeing that video, when you were on stage, and if that's, available publicly, I'll... we'd love to put it in the show note so people can see that video.

Chris Oh, absolutely. Yep, yep. Yeah, and we have different versions of them. So, the first one we did, we used a standard, CMU block, which is, a hollow core brick and, a hollow core block- that's what you build with.

Chris So, we were using the building material versus the building material. when he hits it with a sledgehammer, it shatters into pieces. we had all these complaints from concrete apologists, maybe they're lobbyists for the concrete industry. I don't know why. They said, "Oh, it's not fair because, this is a hollow block versus your solid block."

Chris And, we argue that it is fair because they build with that, we build with this. but we did replicate that, again with a very, solid, concrete block. Same result. You hit it with a hammer, it's gonna shatter, because it's a brittle material. And so I can give you, both of those, examples and you, can show, both if you put it on the website.

Erum Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. [00:32:00] Absolutely. and I also, I mean, now that we're talking about it, and I'll ask the next question, but just since you're talking about the properties, does it also have acoustic properties as well?

Chris It does. So, where our materials, differ, is that, you know, we heat and compact it, so th- this is what gets you the structural material.

Chris And MycoHab, t- to this day is the, first and only structural, mycelium building. So it's using the, blocks as the load-bearing, walls of the structure, and it's holding up, a permanent roof, and it's a permanent structure. so this has less, uh, you know, acoustic, capabilities and less insulating abilities as, say, a material that is uncompressed mycelium, and that's where you're gonna get a lot of these air pockets that are entrained in that, so that's what makes a great insulator.

Chris that said, these materials once they're eight, nine inches thick like we did in Namibia, they're up to code for Ohio, Alaska, you name it, for thermal insulation, even with the compressed material. with our work in, off-planet with NASA, we're developing hydrogels that use [00:33:00] mycelium, as, part of the, material and to grow these bio composites that are great for radiation shielding.

Chris Those are the best insulators, known because they have so many of these micropores that are entrained into it. So that's really great for acoustics. That's really great for insulation. So, I wanna just note that there's a whole suite of materials here. there's myriad materials that, can be done, and the growth processes, are what really affect that.

Chris So it comes down to species, it comes down to growth conditions, substrate, and, all of these things can be tuned, to get you, the best of what you want. So if it's, acoustics, you can, tune for that. You know, if it's a, thermal insulation, you can tune for that. We tend to go with these, you know, very multifunctional materials like the compressed blocks because they're structural first, and then they have, the added benefits of being insulative, fire-resistant, sound attenuating, in some cases we find, radiation shielding.

Erum Wow, that's incredible. can't wait to talk about the space stuff, but- Yeah. ... here on Earth, we're gonna, we're just gonna [00:34:00] a- ask few more questions about Earth, and then we wanna go into space, but- Yeah,

Chris jumping the gun. Sorry.

Erum Yeah, no, no, it's okay. No, this is exciting to me. It's so exciting. so you kind of touched on being up to code, in different states and, you're working with fungi, waste streams, and these are, like, unpredictable environments, and you're asking contractors, insurers, and building code officials to accept materials that are literally alive at some point.

Erum where does the system push back the hardest when you're talking to them?

Chris Well, yeah, it's a good question. And so those are some of the trade-offs we have to make and, who do we accept as partners and, who are we gonna try to convince, who's already drinking the Kool-Aid?

Chris so we, look at those things, and that's where we've developed this, concept so far, and we're gonna continue along the path of we're going to research, develop, and demonstrate the technology as much as possible. So, you know, in Africa, we, built it. we took 12 tons of bush, and we turned it into food and housing and showed that it stores carbon dioxide and, regenerates land at the same time.

Chris [00:35:00] unfortunately, that's all the way in Africa, and it's really hard to get people to go and see it, but when they do see it, they believe it. that's why we're in the mode now of we're gonna build, things here in North America and, give more people the opportunity to see it. and so if I'm the contractor, I don't need to convince myself.

Chris I can actually build this. And so we go all the way to the beginning. We're working with, the waste, providers, things like, forestry management folks, agricultural folks that, have the ag-agricultural waste. we start all the way from that, beginning supply chain, and then we're gonna, be the ones that are actually cultivating the mushrooms, and we're harvesting them, and we're going to, work with the, folks that can sell that product.

Chris And then we take the waste material from that, and we're gonna turn it into a building material, and then we're gonna take that building material, and we're gonna turn it into a structure, and then we're gonna show people, "Here's the structure." this guy from Cleveland, took that from the beginning to the end.

Chris imagine if he was working with the captains of industry that they can do these things like automation develop that in ways that, every step of the line is, profitable [00:36:00] and efficient. and so that's when those people come in, and they have their lobbyists, and they can get through building codes, that's when, the materials will really take off, and they become a licensable, product or a product that, you'll see in Home Depot in 10 years.

Chris right now we're making these materials for our own projects. We're using that as a demonstration, and then hopefully we're going to, find these, captains of industry and these, real manufacturer, players and, political creatures that can, get through a lot of that, the building codes and the, lobbying takes to, get this into mainstream technology.

Karl Yeah. And Iram asked a question a-about the unpredictability of, working with biology. But could you share a moment, like, where something failed or just was unexpected, and it ended up reshaping your overall approach?

Chris So many, times that things have failed, but yeah, there's a lot of times where they fail and they turn into l- lesson that, we take forward and that becomes a, thing that's, [00:37:00] advantageous.

Chris But yeah, I think what we're homing in on is the ability to tune the biology to get it to do what we want. So as you mentioned, you know, biology is very unpredictable. in many cases, maybe we want to make the skin of the mycelium thicker because that's gonna give us a more hydrophobic coating to our material.

Chris It's also gonna give us, you know, that leathery finish that we're looking for, and we want that to be the aesthetic, guideline there. I think, you know, when I first started this, I thought that the mycelium, was, around half, the constituents when it comes through there, 'cause just visually, when you look at the mycelium growing through this, you got a, bag of wet sawdust and it turns into this white, object after, a few weeks or even, if you let it go for several weeks, you're gonna see more and more of this mycelium.

Chris It's actually, very small amount of it. It just covers a lot of surface area. so, learning, what constituents as woody material and mycelium, is the most advantageous. we found that, the more woody material that's in it, the [00:38:00] stronger the material is.

Chris And I, think we, originally thought, "Oh, this mycelium's fantastic. It's the, best part of this, building material." It's actually, serving as a glue, and if you, put too much glue into something, then you're kind of wasting the, strength of the material of the woody material.

Chris So that's one scenario where, we did these experiments and we, grew things for 30 days and then 60 days and then 120 days and looked at the, constituent parts of that, the woody material and the, fungal material, and, found that there's, a trajectory where it tends to peak at that, 60-day, mark.

Chris The 30-day wasn't as strong as the 60-day, but the 120-day was much weaker, 'cause it was, consuming most of that, that material. It has a lot to do with breaking down the, bonds of the, the wood. So, the fungi are secreting these enzymes, and they're breaking down the lignin from the cellulose.

Chris and so when we get into our compaction mode, it's advantageous to have those things broken apart because it'll allow the particles to lay down in a way that, makes them, more dense. and so that was, one of [00:39:00] the lessons learning, where's the sweet spot for that.

Chris same thing where we run trials with the different temperatures and the heating and, there's a lot of lessons where, more is not always better. that's, you know, a life lesson for all of us.

Erum it's interesting that you share, like, how you can kinda control and, in a way, or guide these systems, whether it's, different enzymes or temperature.

Erum and it's very interesting to hear how you've learned to, domesticate, in a way, the, mycelium for, for your purposes. and I wanted to ask a question. Does biology first design actually give the Global South an advantage, places where there are fewer supply chains but more biological feedstocks?

Chris that's a great question, and, I'm hesitant to ever say that the Global South has an advantage on anything. I think, you know, we have hegemony on all the advantages and privileges. so, it would be hard to say that. I think one opportunity that is there is you tend to see [00:40:00] leapfrogs in technology because, let's look at the cellphone.

Chris if they missed the boat on, landlines, and now everyone's getting connected through cellphones, it's a lot easier to put up the cellphone towers. Everyone gets those, and they just skip that whole, landline, concept. And so that was one of the things that we saw, in Malawi and Rwanda when we were there.

Chris I actually had better con- connectivity in Rwanda, from my cellphone way in the, you know, volcanoes and the mountains, in this, small town called Bitaro where there was, no doctors there the year before this hospital was built. but, the connectivity to the cellphone service was much better there than when I moved back to Cleveland and you know, it was in a dead spot in an area there.

Chris So, there is a tendency that when you go straight to the newest technology, you have better opportunity to, get into things there. again, with, necessity being the mother of invention, you see in places like, Rwanda, Malawi, Namibia, where it might be advantageous to do this experimental technology [00:41:00] because we're gonna turn this waste resource of bush into both food and housing.

Chris that's gonna help people And that becomes easier because of the trade policies there, and it's hard to get, materials in there, and they don't have a cement factory, and Malawi, they didn't have a plywood, factory or, you know, whatever it was that, they didn't have that type of technology there makes it advantageous to go with the more ecologically oriented thing.

Chris And so, sometimes just not having, these entrained interests that we have here and the ability to externalize the footprint of the, plywood factory and the cement factory to, people in the, developing world because they are the people in the developing world. there is this opportunity to propose something novel.

Chris and, uh, we see that, also with, the space technology where, we're working on the Moon or we're working on Mars, there's nothing there to really harvest other than air and soil and, in some cases you don't even have the air. But you have water and soil, but you, have these very, [00:42:00] primal, building blocks that you can leverage biology to be your factory for converting things like nitrogen in the air on Mars into, the constituent parts that allow, this organism to grow and this organism to grow and have that cascade.

Chris And then the way that three billion years of, evolution happened on Earth, you can turn that into a very quick succession of, cascading, nutrient supply. those types of, opportunities are easily, proposed in areas where you don't have the cement factory or you don't have the plywood factory.

Chris So that's one case where I'd say there's an advantage, but I would be very hesitant to say that, they have any advantage over us just because, I think we own privilege

Karl Yeah. we'll get into space in a couple of more questions, but, in general, it seems like one of the things your work does is it reframes waste not as a problem, but as a resource or opportunity for food, materials, housing.

Karl How does that shift change the way we think about cities, especially in a [00:43:00] climate-constrained world?

Chris Yeah, that's exactly right. What we like to do is, reframe this idea of waste as being, something that, becomes an opportunity and, that we learn from nature. And so, again, three billion years of evolution, show us that, one organism's waste is another organism's food.

Chris and we, turn that into something, beneficial. So, we leverage that. It's a biomimetic process where we see, how do you, take this waste material and convert it into something useful? Fungi are experts at that. As we know, when trees fall in the forest, they get turned into soil because the decomposers come in and they u-use that as their food source.

Chris That creates the food source for, plants, in the future. And so, when we talk about cities and you talk about, you know, anywhere on the planet you're looking at, there's never gonna be a shortage of waste. So if we can just adopt that ethos, we can look at every single waste stream and then convert that into something useful.

Chris So in Africa, it was this, bush that is causing desert vacation. The, government of N-Namibia wants to find, a use for this. there's, over [00:44:00] 300 million tons of this bush that, that's ready to be used, and they want it to be used. and they asked industry, "Hey, what can we do with this?"

Chris And the industry formed, these coalitions, and they did all this research, and they decided it's no good for, food, even for, livestock. It's no good for this or that or the other thing. The only thing we can really use it for is to burn it. we can turn it into fuel pellets. We can turn it into charcoal.

Chris but it's so gnarly, this blackthorn bush that, you can't really use it as input for much other than burning it. but w-we talk to folks at, the universities that they said, "Okay, this is great for cultivating mushrooms because, you know, we can use that woody material, that cellulosic-rich material, to grow mushrooms."

Chris We were already developing the system for building materials from the waste from cultivation, so it's become circular a couple times over. We take this waste material, it becomes an input for that. That becomes the input for another, material, and the waste just cascades down the line, just like nature, intends

Erum Yeah.

Erum Oh, God, I love that. It's just so incredibly [00:45:00] fascinating, this idea that there is no waste. waste is a man-made thing. like you're saying, nature doesn't have waste. It's always using the molecules that are, there for some purpose. Organisms on... Eating organisms, eating organisms, eating organisms.

Erum And so it's, very incredible and very thoughtful. Okay, so now we're at the time, we're gonna talk about space. I'm so excited. Oof. I really waited- ... very long in this interview to talk about this because when... Again, when you're on stage at BioFabricate, it really changed my perspective on, space biology and how biotech can be used.

Erum and specifically, I recall that, you're collaborating on being able to create structures on the moon, and mycelium is one thing. We can talk about that exercise on creating these extraterrestrial environments.

Erum But also there was another, project that you were, designing where it was, like a folded material in like a rocket that some type of algae in it. Uh, and then you would [00:46:00] send it in advance so that it would land on Mars, say, and then it would unfold on the Mars surface, and then the algae would, grow inside of the structure and then you would have like this oxygenated environment that'd be waiting for you when you actually go to Mars

Chris so I'll try and, explain that. It's so much easier with the animation, so hopefully you can put that up on your web- ... website too. But,

Chris so this is a project we're doing for NASA through the NIAC program, which is NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts. we're working with the renowned astrobiologist, Dr. Lynn Rothschild, who's the primary investigator on this. but the concept in a nutshell is that we have these deployable, inflatable structures that pack real tight into, pre-seeded, buildings.

Chris So, you know, imagine a air mattress that you, fold up, but instead of going into a mattress shape, it goes into a building shape. but inside there you have these bioreactors that are on the outside shell of that, mattress or this building, we liken them to, [00:47:00] spacesuit for microbes.

Chris So these are, you know, little, containers inside that, outer shell that allow the growth of organisms. when it goes to the Moon or Mars, let's take Mars for example, it's going to, land there. It's gonna be met by a rover that has already sourced things like water and carbon dioxide and nitrogen and, potentially regolith if we need to, get some, aggregate to put into there.

Chris And what it's gonna do is it's gonna push it through some tubes, that is just basically like plumbing inside of that inflatable that goes to those outside bioreactor, cells. And each one of those cells, just like a living organism, aggregates into a tissue or that, diaphragm that's on the outside of that.

Chris And when the, gases and the water, reacts with the pre-seeded organisms that are in there, they start to grow. And so we're, gonna start with autotrophic organisms, things like cyanobacteria or, algae, is a good way to think of that. And that [00:48:00] algae's gonna grow inside that water that now has the, carbon dioxide and the nitrogen that's, formed from, the Martian atmosphere.

Chris there is a, a small atmosphere there. There's water that are in the polar regions and subsurface, ice, that, that can be collected, and that all, becomes in situ resources so that, the big thing here is that we're saving potentially trillions of dollars by not sending that heavy material there.

Chris The water and the gases and the regolith are being turned into building materials inside this very lightweight inflatable And inside those bioreactors, those, algal co-colonies start to grow. They fix that carbon dioxide into organic, carbon. They fix that nitrogen from the air into, o-organic nitrogen, which is a very neat trick that only certain organisms can do.

Chris nitrogen is the most ubiquitous thing in the air. You're breathing it all the time, but we have no way of, splitting up that diatomic, bond because it's, so tight together. But some organisms can break that down, and become the building [00:49:00] blocks for, more complex life to grow from there.

Chris So those organisms are going to fix that in such a way that our mycelium can now digest that, and the mycelium, eating those autotrophic organisms, becomes this composite material. That composite material is structural, it's, insulating, and it's radiation resisting. In many cases, it b-forms a great radiation shield that will rivals any, kind of very heavy material that we would have to send from Earth.

Chris And we have all of those benefits in the shell of our building now. So we have a solid building that's, basically grown, from what was, this air mattress or this inflatable structure.

Erum so incredible.

Karl yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. and is that, what you guys call, the Biocycler or is that a different concept?

Karl We wrote "Biocycler is a machine that turns old buildings into new ones." What's this space, concept called?

Chris we're calling it the myco NIAC now. I guess, you know- ... there's like a, maniac in there somewhere. But yeah, So the NIAC is the NASA [00:50:00] program that's, funded this.

Chris So we're currently in the third phase of that program. It's only, y- I think the eighth time that they've ever awarded a phase three, so NASA is very keen on this. they say they hold it up as an example of, what the NIAC program is about, which is game-changing technology. if this crazy idea actually works, this could be a huge, huge thing.

Chris and so that's what NIAC's all about. there are three administrators so far that has held this up as a, example project. either tweeted or, said that this is a great, project. So NASA's really keen on it, for a couple reasons.

Chris Because, the ability to potentially save trillions of dollars in mass transport, which saves energy and everything else too. Because if you take a, already formed structure, we liken that to the turtle which, takes its habitat with it. but it, buys reliability but it costs a lot of energy, and that's why turtles are famously very slow.

Chris the other option, on the other extreme is you're like the bird. So a bird, will migrate to a new place and it will trust in its own ability to make its nest when it gets there from the resources it, finds when it [00:51:00] gets to that destination. So that's a concept that NASA calls in situ resource utilization.

Chris So it's taking, things like the regolith there, which is, Martian or lunar soil. It's taking the water. on the moon there's no gases, but on, on, on Mars know, there's some carbon dioxide and nitrogen that could be leveraged it's taking those things and saying, We can build with this."

Chris So ours is a little bit of the middle of the road, right, where we take this, tightly packed, unit, and we have some pre-seeded biology in it, and then it takes those in situ resources and expands those out to, potentially grams of material can be turned into millions of tons of material.

Chris And that's where, life is so amazing and prolific. the exponential growth of some of these organisms are, just, phenomenal. Given the right, nutrients, you can turn that into, potentially millions of tons of building materials, and you can have factories that are bioreacting to create those materials.

Chris you asked about the Biocycler, so that's our, third major project. So of course, MycoHab typifies this idea of food and [00:52:00] materials using fungi. the MycoNyac really, typifies this idea of, just being able to grow materials and, leverage bioreactors to create a living structure.

Chris And that works, in remote areas like the Moon or Mars or, potentially places like Namibia or, even places in, North America that are hard to get to. but the Biocycler, the concept is similar to MycoHab, where we're leveraging fungi to make building materials, but instead of creating food and materials, what we're looking at doing is, remediating as we recycle.

Chris and so, the building industry and its, brilliance, has put all kinds of toxic chemicals in, built environment. things like, heavy metals like lead that goes into paint, lots of petrochemicals that go into, asphaltic materials or bituminous materials.

Chris and, fungi, are, really able to, potentially either break those down or to absorb and neutralize th- those things. So with, the petrochemicals that are in the built environment, these are made from fossil [00:53:00] fuels. fossil fuels are made from ancient plants, and so they have a lot of the same hydrocarbons that the fungi crave, if I can borrow a phrase there.

Chris so the fungi, crave these hydrocarbons. They, are expert at breaking them down. and so, when they secrete their enzymes to digest their food externally, these enzymes will go out, and they will take those long molecule chains, and they'll break them down into smaller monomers, uh, which are, now safe in the environment.

Chris when it comes to toxic, material or elemental toxins, things like heavy metals like lead and cadmium and arsenic that are, for some reason in the built environment, you have to do almost the opposite. Instead of breaking down a long molecule chain, you're taking elemental toxin and pairing it with a long molecule chain that makes it biologically inert And so there's, various, methods that the fungi can mediate that, bioabsorption, bio-, chelation is one we point to, and that, that's probably the easiest to understand because, people have heard of chelation therapy, where if you have [00:54:00] lead in your blood, you'll, have these chemicals that go through your body and scavenge for them.

Chris They'll latch onto them. And so chelation is this idea of grabbing onto it, and creating a longer molecule chain such that it's now, not, going to poison your blood or, get, absorbed into your bones. It's going to go through your, urinary system, and you'll, be able to pass that, naturally.

Chris So what we look at doing a, a pre-chelation using this idea that these, um, long molecule chains, the biochemicals that are made can go in and, latch onto them such that if they were to, God forbid, be, ingested by a, a child, it wouldn't poison them. but that even goes for things like vermin that, that tend to eat, organic materials.

Chris if they were to eat, the elemental toxin, that could potentially go up the food chain, you know, with the spider eating the fly and the bird eating the spider and, the old song, right? that goes all the way up to the cat and the horse and the everything else.

Chris But the same way that, you know, mercury gets lodged in the food [00:55:00] web is a problem for tuna, which is the big fish, that eats the smaller fish and gets accumulated in them. these elemental toxins have the, capacity for, going up the food chain that way So when we, pair them with these long molecule chains, they become biologically inert, they don't enter the food web, and they become this inert substance that, is safe at the end of the day.

Chris the first thing we want to do, obviously, is to extract as much of those heavy metals out as we recycle. but the idea that we can neutralize that is, part of the components of BioCycler, and you, pointed to that example of literally recycling a house. That's our goal with this, is, we're gonna take this old house that has these toxins in it, we're gonna put it through our, Willy Wonka or Dr.

Chris Seuss meat grinder machine that grinds that up, and it comes out the other end as a Palladian villa, right? That's the, image that we have for this. But the, whole idea is to, be able to take even the worst toxic sites, put it through this process and, prove the technology that the fungi can not only recycle that but remediate it as it [00:56:00] does so, so we're not just kicking the can down the road of, taking this toxic waste, putting it into landfills where it's gonna leach into the water supply or, introducing it into some other, mechanism where we're, making it somebody else's problem.

Chris This is a permanent solution to that, problem where, when the, the chelation happens, it becomes something that, is, biologically inert, and if that, toxin is introduced somehow into the food web, it's, it's safe

Erum Yeah. Oh my gosh. Wow. a lot of this sounds like science fiction, but you're doing it.

Erum It's science fact. You're working on it. It's incredible, all these projects. and you have these prototypes, but I would love to know a little bit more about, kind of your plans on how to bring this to market, right? I know the NASA thing is, I mean, is a very specific project, but we had a quick conversation about what does it look like to, spin up a company and start selling some of this stuff.

Chris Yeah, that's a good question. that's the, the nut we still have to crack, I guess. it's a hard nut to crack, because, in many cases we're taking on these projects because we have the [00:57:00] goal of, environmental impact, environmental justice. we're looking at, these humanitarian reasons for doing what we do.

Chris We have to come up with the subversive, ways of, selling that to people and saying, Here's the profit motive, that goes behind that." Fortunately, it's there, so it's easy. I think, you know, if you really think about it, what we're talking about doing is replacing these expensive inputs with these waste inputs.

Chris if we prove that, you can already make your money taking, this material, that, that's created, high-priced adaptogenic mushroom product, and then you take the waste from that, you're just replacing things like virgin lumber n- now that cost a lot of money and, require deforestation with a material that comes out of the, waste stream of the, mushroom cultivation.

Chris So you do fine with the mushroom cultivation. You make your money off of that. Now you have a waste material. A lot of times there's tipping fees to some of these waste resources, so if you can collect those too in the manufacturing process, then you're, already starting with, a bit of income generation, some revenue [00:58:00] generation, whereas most people are spending money to get their, material inputs.

Chris So if we can prove that, the stuff that comes out of the mushroom, cultivation, process, is just as effective as the, two-by-four that has to, come from logging and milling and turning into that, base product- then all things being equal, you're already gonna be at lower price point for making your material.

Chris Then you have the added benefit if you vertically integrate that, you can make much more money off of the mushroom, growing than you can from the material production because, three things involved here in a project like MycoHab, you can sell carbon credits for $50 a ton.

Chris You can sell the building materials for, maybe three to $5,000 a ton. the mushrooms, at wholesale cost, you can get around $30,000 per ton. so, you know, the orders of magnitude going up and the, the one thing, that is the, byproduct from the architect standpoint anyway is the most expensive, product that we're coming at there 'cause I'm most concerned about the building material and the carbon, [00:59:00] sequestration.

Chris That's, you know, where I am as an architect. but if I've, already made a ton of money off of the mushrooms, then, I can do these humanitarian projects, and we can, make these materials cheaper. Same thing with BioCycler. the remediation services that go behind that, you can potentially make much more money, doing that remediation than you can, making the materials, doing the carbon credits.

Chris so it's a way of, Proving that technology, proving that model and convincing people that, here's how you're gonna make money if you let me do my humanitarian project or if we work together on this," then, we hope we get these, you know, investors that, can c-come on board and they're the ones that can, sell that a- and develop that.

Chris And so we're always looking for partners. we're teaming up with some folks now in, California that are looking to replicate, what we did in, in Namibia with a developed world version of this, where we're, instead of, gourmet mushrooms to feed people, we're looking at adaptogenic products that go into gummies and, these healthy lifestyle products that get top dollar.

Chris And then the, first buildings that come out from this will be [01:00:00] eco luxury, where, we're going to, pitch to, people that, care about environmentalism but have the disposable income to buy, you know, a backyard office or, these really small, minimal viable products, as, they're called, the MVPs.

Chris I'm learning all the lingo of the of the markets and things as, as we're doing this. So, you know, we've developed those small scale, projects that are attractive to the, early adopters, the, first consumers, and kind of sell it along those lines until we're able to prove the technology such that you have these huge multinational, corporations, your Owens Cornings, your Saint-Gobains, your others that are, interested in, taking that forward, where they're printing, millions of tons of material.

Chris and they're, the ones that are gonna, save the planet by doing this. We just have to convince them it's worth their time.

Erum Yeah. I just wanted to say a quick comment, because I could see these eco lux myco habs be, like, in a resort, like a wellness resort, just like, White Lotus 4, I guess.

Erum You know? Yeah. Like... Yeah. And everyone just [01:01:00] going to them and I bet it also has a wonderful experience to be in one of those. I would love to be in a mycelium, hab, just be in that, vibe Well, the smell, too. I mean, you were describing the aroma therapy.

Erum I bet it's a wonderful experience. But I could see it. I could see it be a resort.

Karl So when you think about the way this will roll out, like in 10 or 20 years, do you see bio-based construction as being the exception that proves the rule or the rule?

Karl And what needs to happen for bio-based construction to really become the default way that we build our built environment?

Chris That's a great question. I do see it as the rule. So I think, by mid-century, we're, mostly biogenic, materials, and I, I think a lot of it has to be biofabrication. We need to look at these microbes for their ability to, sequester carbon as we manufacture.

Chris Gates Foundation has a statistic that says we're gonna build a New York City worth of buildings every month for the next 40 years. You know- That's crazy ... if we're, if we're building with carbon, or we're [01:02:00] building with concrete and steel and aluminum, which are responsible for 23% of the world's carbon emissions, there's no way to get to carbon neutrality by mid-century.

Chris we must change the way we build. when people see that we can actually do this, we can, create materials actually store carbon or sequester carbon as we build, I think that we have the opportunity to actually build our way out of the climate crisis. you have these materials, and processes, and it's not just for architecture, it's for all manufacturing.

Chris I think that's gonna be a huge thing. We talked, there's the leather goods that are coming from mycelium. There are, algal-based plastics that, as you make your plastic fork or your plastic straw, imagine plastic straws actually saving the planet. wouldn't we, be quick to adopt those again, right?

Chris So the idea that you can actually manufacture and sequester carbon dioxide at the same time means that we don't have to change our lifestyle. It means that we can continue to consume, the way that we do, and we can, live this, great life that we have now, and solve the climate crisis [01:03:00] by, manufacturing in just a much smarter way.

Chris So I think that, when people see that as the opportunity, smarter people than me start working on the straws and, whatever else it is that, that is gonna, save the planet, those are gonna proliferate. And, specifically when it comes to architecture, I mentioned that, statistic of one New York City for every, month for the next 40 years.

Chris Buildings are the biggest thing w- we do. So if you look at planet Earth, the biggest thing is the oceans, right? We have so much water, 70% of the Earth, then we have land, 30% of the Earth, but, we don't tend to, build or, or create that. What we do create are buildings and infrastructure, and as we're manufacturing, that mass.

Chris y- if we put biomass into that, and including the plants that draw down carbon dioxide, we lock that away long-term in the buildings that last for, decades or potentially centuries, then you're gonna store that carbon dioxide in that, mass for a very long time. and so if we're already doing that, that's a really [01:04:00] great place to look at.

Chris You know, the oceans and the land, that, that's also another thing, and there's, direct carbon capture where people are looking at injecting, liquid CO2 deep into the earth and using the oceans to sink, carbon dioxide in that. I worry that that has unintended, consequences that, we need to look at.

Chris So buildings is something that we're already doing, that we need to do to let people, have dignified housing. by mid-century, that's where we should really focus our attention at storing carbon dioxide long-term.

Erum Oh, I love it. I love it. I mean, the biomanufacturing, that's why we're here.

Erum This is what we talk about the, on the podcast. You're singing our song. Thank you so much for the portion of the interview, but now we're gonna be doing our quick-fire round. Are you ready?

Chris I'm nervous now.

Erum No, no, no. This is, this is gonna be quick, quick answers, all right?

Erum Here we go. If fungi had a personality, are they more an architect, engineer, artist? What is it?

Chris I feel like they are very free-spirited, and just kinda go [01:05:00] out and they, do their thing. So I'd put them more on the artsy end than the engineering end.

Chris But, problems that they solve, tends to lead to, engineering. But it's so hard to anthropomorphize, a kingdom like, fungi.

Karl Amazing. What's one material that we should stop using in construction today?

Chris I've already mentioned, concrete, steel, and aluminum as being, 23% of the world's carbon emissions, nearly a, quarter of the carbon emissions.

Chris but I'm, I'm not willing to say we gotta stop using those today because even with mycotecture at the w- way it is, if we were to, pivot towards that, we would still need concrete, substructure, those types of things. Steel is still very useful for, what we use steel for and, a- aluminum as well.

Chris But, a little bit more to phase those things out. one thing that, guess, if we were gonna say we should stop doing this or that, there are a lot of wood products, that have injected resins, in them that, take what is essentially a biodegradable material and turn it into something that is [01:06:00] non-biodegradable.

Chris if we have, woody materials, I, I like them for structure, I like them for interiors, I like them for everything that, you know, your furniture, all of these types of things that are, untainted by these other, many cases toxic chemicals, because you can, disassemble them, you can recycle them, you can biocycle them you, if you want to.

Chris but ultimately, if you needed to, landfill that or compost that, that's gonna return to the earth as a natural product. When we mix it with these toxic c- chemicals, what we're doing is we're taking that, really green material and, spoiling it.

Erum Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. It's very interesting.

Erum Okay. This one I think I know the answer, but Earth or Mars, where would you rather build first?

Chris absolutely Earth. So there's no better planet than the Earth, and, I get that question a lot when we talk about, building off-planet. You know, why are you focused on, that?

Chris And, and absolutely, we focus on that for those projects, and we-- wanna do is take the best of the Earth with us when we go there, and that, that's why [01:07:00] the projects we are proposing are Earth-based and, life-based, and we look at all five kingdoms, and we think you can't do this alone.

Chris And so, you know, we go from the smallest organisms to the most complex o- organisms like us as, animals, as humans, to do that. And so any work that we look at on, the Moon and Mars is, learning all of its lessons from Earth. It's the only place in the entire universe that has life that we know about.

Chris and it's the perfect cradle for, making that happen. So, there's nothing like Earth. there never well, I won't say never, but, certainly within our lifetimes there won't be anything like it

Karl Okay. What's the weirdest material you've ever successfully built with?

Chris As I mentioned, we've, done work taking construction and demolition waste. We've also used waste from the fashion industry and converted into that. I've got a sample right here that is, uh, what we call regolith simulant. So this is, basically simulating what, the lunar surface is.

Chris It's this, dust. it's technically sand that we're doing [01:08:00] that, but it's, it's mixed to the right gradients that, the company that made it calls it, GRC-1, which is, Glenn Research Center, NASA Glenn Research Center. They use it in their rover testing facility where they have a slope lab that, rovers go over the, the, the, um, the regolith simulant.

Chris and so that's a really weird one. But, there's also the aerogels that we're creating that have, mycelium and trained with it to, deposit these, biochemicals that are radiation resistant that go into this very, thermally insulated material. So loads of weird stuff to talk about.

Chris It's hard to pick a favorite, I guess.

Erum Yeah. Super weird. Okay, continuing with the weirdness, strangest place you ever thought, "We could build a building here"?

Chris I never thought I would be working off-planet. So, it came about when I was at a NASA, conference on biomimicry and, presenting these ideas of, growing buildings.

Chris and that's when I met, Dr. Lynn Rothschild at NASA Ames. and she said, "That's a cool idea. I've been thinking about growing buildings on Mars." And- ... you wanna [01:09:00] work together?" And, we hit it off right away and, we, we sent out a proposal less than two weeks after that, to NASA, headquarters.

Chris They loved the idea, and so we've been off and running ever since then. So, sometimes when she tells the story, she's like, "I don't know who thought of, growing, buildings off-planet first," and it was, definitely her. I, you know, that was never on my radar. I guess I would say Mars is the weirdest place I've ever thought about building something.

Karl so amazing. I mean, Chris, like I said at the beginning, we were really looking forward to having this conversation. Another mind-blowing conversation. Really appreciate you taking the time to come on the Grow Everything podcast. Thank you so much.

Chris Thanks. It's been my pleasure.

Erum Thank you.

Erum We've been talking to a lot of people across different podcasts, and we've come across this really great podcast called Smart Tea. Let's hear from them.

Smart Tea Hi, I'm Aarti Assundi, host of Smart Tea, a science history podcast that tells the stories of the people behind the world's greatest discoveries. Join my co-hosts and I as we chat about scientists like Percy [01:10:00] Spencer, the fifth grade school dropout who invented the microwave.

Smart Tea Or Frances Kelsey, who only got into grad school because her name sounded like a boy's, and then went on to work at the FDA, where she prevented the thalidomide crisis in the US. If that sounds like your cup of tea, check out the Smart Tea Podcast. Talk to you soon

Karl Yoram, what did you think about this episode with Chris [01:11:00] Maurer?

Erum I'm happy we finally had to have it, because I met Chris when I just started working with you again at BioFabricate, and when I saw him speak on stage about the work that he was doing, I was like, "Holy smokes, biotech is not what I think it is.

Erum There's so much work to be done." And I'm just excited that, he's continuing to d- work on all these different fronts. I love that we went down each one. We can, rehash that. But he made the future feel more tangible, his ideas you know, when you first hear them, like they sound like science fiction, but then he walked us through it and he talked about his prototypes, whether it was a MycoHab or the BioCycler, and then of course all the work with NASA, which you know I love.

Erum and I do recommend people, if you have not listened to our episode with Eben Bayer, and our episode about the future is fungi, go back and listen to it. We'll put that in the show notes because it really gives you a nice deep dive on the power of mycelium.

Karl I'm gonna back up to seeing Chris at BioFabricate, which we talked a little bit about in the, [01:12:00] interview, but the image that I will always remember is him showing, a video of someone with a sledgehammer going at two bricks, one being a concrete brick, the cinder block bricks that so much is constructed from, and the sledgehammer just breaks right through it, and then same guy, same sledgehammer, is trying to do the same thing to a mycelium brick, and it's just so much stronger.

Karl It can't be broken. There's so much density. And we've had people on the podcast come on, and I'm specifically, I'm thinking about, Lauren of Prometheus Materials, who we interviewed very early on, talking about the, engineering aspects of working with biology. They're very different.

Karl Like the concrete that he is growing, has acoustic and thermal properties that you don't get, and this stuff that Chris has made is much stronger than cinder block. So I think that that is a huge thing for us to consider, as we start to use more of these building materials and hopefully as they become more, ubiquitous.

Erum Yeah, absolutely. And then creating [01:13:00] these biomaterials or bio-made materials using waste as feedstock, I think that's the biggest shift that we all need to consider versus, obviously concrete coming from, you very extractive, a lot of heat needs to be used. It's very energy intensive. but to be able to use waste and ambient temperatures is amazing.

Erum And, whether it's, you know, and we had talked about this in the episode, whether it's using biology to turn the waste into food or materials or housing is very important, and you talked a lot about this, Carl, on your TEDx talk.

Karl Yeah. Well, I talked about urban waste and how much urban waste the city of New York generates, and urban waste is a different- beast than agricultural waste.

Karl We will have guests who come on who talk about agricultural waste, which is very homogeneous, whereas urban waste is heterogeneous and it contains a lot of different things.

Karl So it's much harder to process. We're not quite there yet. But waste as a feedstock is a huge topic. We've talked about it many times on Grow Everything, and [01:14:00] we will, link to some of the shows that highlight that, and we'll have more shows on that in the future. I think one of the things that I found really interesting about the conversation with Chris is that he shows that climate, housing, food, and materials aren't separate problems.

Karl They can all be addressed with one regenerative system, one integrated regenerative system. And the example, again, I'll use those bricks, is when Chris showed those bricks, it turned out that the people who were growing those bricks in Namibia were selling the mushrooms, the fruiting body, of the mushrooms in the market.

Karl So they were making money from selling mushrooms while at the same time growing these bricks. I love that.

Erum Yeah. Yeah, and I, I just love that, you know, Namibia is this extreme environment, which is, the extreme environments in space, which of course we talked a bit about that. but then also taking what he's created and thinking of how can he generate revenue today?

Erum And he talked about creating these eco-luxury myco habs that he could sell, and I'd buy one. I mean, I'm not that I'm this like, you [01:15:00] know, luxurious eco I'm an eco-luxury buyer, but like, I would definitely stay in one, and I could see that these would pop up, maybe at Burning Man.

Erum I don't know. I've never been. I have no desire to go. But it's, something that I could see being sold, and I, hope that that happens soon. I think that there's a lot of branding that could go along with that. That could be so cool. And of course, like you mentioned, that these isn't just about being eco.

Erum It's about high performance. the fact that this mycelium has, acoustics and it has blast resistance, and it has all these wonderful features that you would want in a, home, in a house, somewhere where you're staying and seeking shelter. so I love that there's, multiple markets, multiple business models being thought of here, and that, there's this idea, of course a big one when it comes to Namibia is just that the Global South has this big opportunity to leapfrog in technology, which it has done when it came to, for example, having cell phones versus landlines.

Erum Like, they didn't have to build all [01:16:00] these, telephone towers and wires all over the place. They went straight to cell phone. I know you have a lot of thoughts about this as well, Carl.

Karl I actually watch a lot of construction videos on how people build houses and, repurpose shipping containers, use old, building methods to create new buildings.

Karl So stomping down dirt, mixing dirt with hay. Really old types of, building methods that, maybe people have forgotten, but they still are prevalent in the Global South. And then when you pair those with these kind of new technologies using mycelium, I think it creates some really interesting opportunities for creating housing and really interesting housing in places where it's needed.

Karl We need it here too, no doubt, but I think we need a lot of ways. There is not just one solution, we need multiple solutions thrown at the housing problem, and being able to do things with mycelium or with these old construction methods, I think is very smart and we should pursue those. and then Chris talked a lot about space, which I know is your topic, that you love, and I've [01:17:00] come to love it as well, by the way, because I just see that the applications of space have so much utility here on Earth.

Karl and you know, I keep thinking about some of the stuff that he and Eben had talked about, where you have, like, these unfolding origami objects that maybe you grow the mycelium into. I love that kind of stuff. What was the space standout for you, Iram?

Erum Yeah, I mean, the fact that he's actually working on it, right?

Erum And that unfolding, that, that's, the video that I took away when I first saw Chris speak. Oh. yeah, so the, when I think of Chris speaking, he had this simulated video of, as he mentioned in, the interview, just like this rocket that would go to Mars, and it has this, folded, like habitat.

Erum and in the folds were, cyanobacteria and different algae. But once it unfolded, the algae would, you know, grow, and it would have, there would be nutrients in it, and it would create an oxygenated environment. And that is just s- such great thinking. and I just... [01:18:00] It's just the tip of the iceberg.

Erum I mean, there's a lot that, Chris, I'm sure, has talked about with his, colleagues at NASA when it comes to architecture and design. the person that he's spoke with or he mentioned is Lynn Rothschild, who is a force when it comes to space, astrobiology, and working at NASA, has been an inspiration and a mentor for many people we've had on this podcast that worked, at the of space and biology, and who we will have on this podcast in a couple of weeks.

Erum And that is a great conversation you will not want to miss. so I'm really excited for that episode.

Karl also as we close out, we had mentioned that we're going to be doing a live recording at Genspace. due to our schedules and conflicts, we decided to move that to the fall, so stay tuned for that one.

Karl our friends at World Biomarkets just are h- holding an event at The Hague in the Netherlands, and they're holding another event in Omaha, Nebraska in the heartland of the United States in September, we will be there in September attending.

Karl So [01:19:00] use Grow Everything as the discount code and you'll get 25% to attend. We hope to see you there.

Erum Amazing. All right. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to the Grow Everything podcast. If you have any questions or comments or just wanna talk to us about anything, reach out to us.

Erum We're very open to hearing from our listeners that we love so much, and you can find all of our contact information in the show notes. Please don't forget to subscribe to our Substack. You can get Grow Everything delivered to your inbox every week. So with that, let's grow.

Karl Let's grow.