New project seeks to solve housing crisis using mushroom byproduct and troublesome weed
In Namibia, a plant colloquially known as the encroaching bush is threatening the land with desertification. In addition, the country faces a growing housing shortage. MycoHAB, a nonprofit in Namibia, has found a solution to both problems for the price of one.
Chris Maurer is an architect behind MycoHAB, which aims to combat the housing crisis and climate change by researching and producing sustainable building materials.
The organization has found a process that can take the encroaching bush, use it as the substrate — like soil but for growing mushrooms — and use the mushrooms to feed people. Then, the waste material is used to build bricks for new houses.
Maurer spoke to The World’s co-host, Carolyn Beeler, to learn more.
Carolyn Beeler: So how does this material compare? This mix of the woody stuff from these invasive bushes and the, let’s say, roots of the mushrooms? How does that material compare to a traditional building material, like concrete for example, on strength and price and all those good things?
Chris Maurer: It compares very well to concrete in terms of strength. The blocks that we make in Namibia have compressive strengths of around 6 megapascals, which is very similar to what concrete blocks are in that part of the world. The compression strength is just one type of characteristic that we look at in building materials. It’s also insulative. It tends to be fire-resistant and it’s sound-attenuating, so it can have all kinds of multifunctional effects.
What are the downsides of this material, and what are the negatives?
Well, I guess if you do compare it to concrete and other materials like that, you wouldn’t use this exposed to the elements the same way that you could some of those materials. The houses we’re building in Namibia now, we’re using a mud plaster to protect it from rain and things like that, very similar to wood construction. It can last forever. There’s lots of wood buildings that are centuries old. Biogenic material lasts a very long time if you protect it, but things like concrete are better for using underground in areas where it can become very wet or humid.
So, you’ve built one of these homes so far, is that correct? And if so, describe what it looks like.
Yeah. So, it’s made out of 900 or more of these blocks that we’ve made in Namibia. Each one of those blocks are about 10 kilograms each. So, this one very small house that we built sequestered 9 tons of carbon. It used 9 tons of encroaching bush and it made 3 tons of mushrooms in its production. It’s a very small house. It’s a one-bedroom, one-bath, but it’s basically a model for how we hope to go forward and scale this up to hundreds of homes, thousands of homes and, you know, one day millions of homes with this process.
So, only one of these homes is standing so far. What are the challenges to scaling up this approach to building fundraising?
We’re currently funding to scale the process now. We’ve basically made this demonstration project in Namibia. It was a collaboration between my studio, Red House, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Bits and Atoms and Standard Bank Group, which funded this as part of their environmental and social governance program. Now that we’ve proven that it can be done, that you can take, encroach or push and turn it into food and housing in a vertically integrated process, we’re pulling in investors and doing this at industrial scale.
And how does cost compare with these bricks to traditional building materials?
Well, not to be too cheeky, but the materials are free, but we don’t sell them necessarily. At this point, we’re using the mushrooms, we’re selling those. And that’s basically going to be our revenue-generating process. And then, the building materials are going strictly toward humanitarian housing at this point. As I mentioned, this was started under an environmental social governance program with Standard Bank. And so, they are committed along with partners like the Shack Dwellers Federation and the Bio Brick Foundation to support housing for the nearly half of all Namibians that are living in informal settlements now.
Now, what’s your ultimate goal? Looking down maybe 5-10 years, how do you hope this changes buildings and homes in Namibia?
Well, I hope in Namibia and throughout the world that we’re using more of these bio fabrication functions because it can store carbon dioxide. And I want to see architecture start to become a solution for climate change, rather than a major part of the problem.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Sign up for our daily newsletter