Can we live in a fungus megastructure?

[Still Waters]

Imagine that you roll out of bed onto a living fungus floor. The walls and ceiling — heck, the whole apartment building, down to the plumbing and electrical systems — are made of fungus too. Wood and concrete are remnants of the distant past; this entire city, from the schools to the stores to the hospitals, is made of living fungus — constantly growing, dying off and regenerating itself.

That’s the vision laid out in a provocative new paper, which a team of European academics say is the first-ever exploration of living fungus’ potential as a raw material for futuristic, eco-friendly “monolithic structures” that would, in their telling, revolutionize the entire built environment and economy.

“We propose to develop a structural substrate by using live fungal mycelium,” reads the paper. “Fungal buildings will self-grow, build, and repair themselves.”

https://futurism.com/researchers-want-live-fungus-megastructure

https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.13262

[XenoFish]

"Mom! The floor ate my cookie."

I wonder if the future will be biomechanical? 

[+joc]

11 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

"Mom! The floor ate my cookie."

I wonder if the future will be biomechanical? 

911 What's the emergency....

"The floor just ate my son!"

Somewhere in the future...Borb  is questioning his science teacher,

"Is there anyway to know for sure why all the Humans disappeared suddenly?"

[AstralHorus]

I mean we pretty much all ready do, the studies shown about how the mycelium functions shows we cannot exist without it. 

[flying squid]

Jules Verne had a vision about this idea many years ago.

[+Desertrat56]

This sounds dangerous to me. My brother-in-law just got out of the hospital because of Valley Fever, which is a fungus that he accidentally breathed into his lungs and it stayed.  How would there be any guarantee that the fungus would not be airborne at any time?

[aztek]

fungus will always be airborne, that is how spores spread,  but not every fungus is dangerous,

[aztek]

maybe one day we can grow structures, the way bones and crystals grow

[Orphalesion]

41 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

This sounds dangerous to me. My brother-in-law just got out of the hospital because of Valley Fever, which is a fungus that he accidentally breathed into his lungs and it stayed.  How would there be any guarantee that the fungus would not be airborne at any time?

I mean I assume they'd engineer the fungus in such a way that it wouldn't be hazardous to people. There's heaps of fungi spores flying around in natural environments and that don't cause us to be sick.

Even with my irrational revulsion against mushrooms I can see this concept being a good idea and I'm sure if this were to come to anything it wouldn't just involve shoving people into spongy, moist mushroom abodes.  I mean there's even "vegan leather" grown from fungus.
What I assume is that the fungus would create the skeleton of the building and then there'd be wall paneling and floor coverings and all that good stuff and you wouldn't even be aware of the fungus inside the walls.

Edited January 21, 2020 by Orphalesion

[+Desertrat56]

1 minute ago, Orphalesion said:

I mean I assume they'd engineer the fungus in such a way that it wouldn't be hazardous to people. There's heaps of fungi spores flying around in natural environments and that don't cause us to be sick.

On one hand I can see this whole idea being a good idea and I'm sure if this were to come to anything it wouldn't just involve shoving people into spongy, moist mushroom abodes.  I mean there's even "vegan leather" grown from fungus. What I assume is that the fungus would create the skeleton of the building and then there'd be wall paneling and floor coverings and all that good stuff and you wouldn't even be aware of the fungus inside the walls.

I don't see the point.  We have plenty of building materials to make walls with, we have dirt, even, why go to the trouble of making fungus walls?

[Orphalesion]

11 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

I don't see the point.  We have plenty of building materials to make walls with, we have dirt, even, why go to the trouble of making fungus walls?

Because it would be a very cheap and environmental friendly way to create large structures. As it's written in the article, it could make the construction of large structures less dependent on fossil fuels to create and move the building material. For example, less need for steel, perhaps, or no longer a need to use as much wood in the construction of a house. Fungi grows fast and is much more renewable than steel, concrete or even wood.

Don't imagine it as just living in giant mushrooms. In reality, if anything comes to it, it would probably just replace or complement parts of the inner structure of a building.

Edited January 21, 2020 by Orphalesion

[+Desertrat56]

3 minutes ago, Orphalesion said:

Because it would be a very cheap and environmental friendly way to create large structures. As it's written in the article, it could make the construction of large structures less dependent on fossil fuels to create and move the building material. For example, less need for steel, perhaps, or no longer a need to use as much wood in the construction of a house. Fungi grows fast and is much more renewable than steel, concrete or even wood.

But it isn't as strong as steel so I don't see it being useful for multi story buildings.

[flying squid]

It would be better if we could live in a grape megastructure. Imagine a builfings made of huge bunches of giant grapes. 

[Orphalesion]

13 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

But it isn't as strong as steel so I don't see it being useful for multi story buildings.

As I wrote it probably wouldn't be a complete house made out of fungus. Likely the fungus would replace or complement a part of the inner structure, at least that's the way I'd imagine. And every little bit that we can switch to eco-friendly and easily renewable materials is a big help.
I do recommend reading the linked paper in the OP,  if you haven't already, it's free, it's not very long (it's however very theoretical). At this point it's all looks very theoretical, but I think it does have  some potential. The article, for example proposes that we might be able to find a fungus that can produce wood-like material and as I speculated casing/paneling is part of the idea.

I'm sadly not an architect, so honestly, all I can do is guessing as well.

Truth be told I'm not crazy about living in a partly fungus based house either, simply because any kind of mushroom creeps me out, but we gotta change the way we live and if that means meal worm burgers and mushroom "leather"/"wood" I'm alright with it.

[DingoLingo]

fungus? hmm I thought a type of coral would be a better way