Use is in need of beauty to survive.
Beatrix Potter was the renowned author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and one of the first ground-breaking female mycologists. In her study of fungi, she produced hundreds of sketches of fungi in their natural setting as well as collecting several herself.
She was a model of ambition, innovation, and interdisciplinary success. Perhaps in a sense, she was the anthropomorphization of mycelium’s contribution to the future. Once an overshadowed part of the outdoors, it is coming to the forefront of innovation and proving to be a lucrative venture for many. In the same way, Potter learned to command respect in a Victorian world over-saturated with patriarchy and female subordination.
Not only did she contribute to the male-dominated world of science, but she also made a living as a successful writer, eventually using her royalties to purchase Hill Top farm, where she eventually passed away.
With a similar persistence, the fungi Potter once studied so carefully is now creeping into the world of engineering, construction, food, fashion, and more. Yet there is something missing from this description of mycelium that is just as worthy of mention, some quality that was also integral to Potter’s study of the natural world. That is beauty.
Why mention it though? Indeed, it seems to stand quite flimsily against concerns of economic, environmental, and social balance; Frivolous at best, distracting at worst. We need to focus on what matters. However there is always something that ties the ying and yang of science and art together. That is where the seemingly clear-cut lines of convention start to grow blurry. As Valerie Nadeau points out in her article Art and Architecture: Why Beauty Matters, “Use is in need of beauty to survive.”
Perhaps this is actually at the core of what makes myco-composites so alluring. Not only does it satisfy the immediate need to build, but also the underlying desire to represent. According to Alain de Botton, we consider a structure beautiful if it reflects our values, particularly the ones that society seems to lack. For example, in the modern day a simpler style is more fashionable in architecture due to the excess of material wealth and a subsequent longing for a more basic and casual life. Following on from this, mycelium building materials serve the same means: we build with cleaner and more eco-friendly materials as a way to demonstrate our alliance with nature in a time where our bond to the earth feels so frayed. Once again, “use is in need of beauty to survive”.
Yet when it comes to representing ideas holistically through our structures, there is something even more enchanting about fungi.which can only be found on a molecular level. Let’s zoom into the cell wall, which consists mostly of chitin(C₂₂H₅₄N₂₁)n, a polymer which distinguishes fungi from bacteria or plants, and polysaccharides(C₆H₁₀O₅)n, chains of sugar molecules bonded together. Some overall examples of polysaccharides, not necessarily found in fungal cell walls, are insulin, starch, glycogen, and xantham gum in plants. However in this case, I will be referring to a polysaccharide called glucan which consists of repeating units of the simple sugar glucose.
What makes mycelium so special is, in large part, the unique way in which these compounds are arranged. Chitin(i.e. N-acetyl-D-glucosamine), which exists in long and parallel strands, is cross linked by glucan, which effectively holds the parallel layers of chitin together and provides rigidity to the cell wall. It is this unique structure that makes myco-composites so strong.
Scientific Reports. “Schematic Representation of Mycelium Physiology at Different Scales,” Scientific Reports, 24 Jan. 2017, www.nature.com/articles/srep41292.pdf. Accessed 5 Feb. 2022.
In addition to this strength is the flexibility and freedom of working with mycelium. Varying mechanical and structural properties can be achieved based solely on the substrate and the species used. This is why fungi can be used to develop more eco-friendly materials across all industries, from food to fashion to buildings. Still there are plenty of gaps in the understanding of engineering with mycelium, but it is so far a very promising area of research.
As Nadeau mentions, architects in the ‘60s started to become impatient with the seemingly unnecessary detail in their structures. Rather than waste time and money splurging on something pretty, they turned their focus to utility. “Many of these buildings were later abandoned or had to be demolished because no one wanted to live in them anymore,” she remarks. “They were simply too ugly for anyone to buy them…” But this issue is not resolved; It lives on today. “Modern is only modern for so long,” she warns. “It always outdates itself.”
On the other hand sits the enchantment of fungi which, due to its structure and composition, is a promising start for the future of architecture. Is this really forward-thinking though, or has it been waiting here all along?
Feng Shui, the Chinese art of arranging buildings, objects, and space to achieve harmony, has been around since ancient times. It highlights the importance of beauty and its impact on your chi. In more Western parlance, this tells us something we all already know: your surroundings affect your mood.
With its ideas grounded in early Taoism, Feng Shui emphasizes the importance of balancing ying and yang in the surrounding environment as well as improving the flow of chi, which is thought to be the life force that inhabits everything. Nevertheless, whether one believes the spiritual element of this practice or not doesn’t take away from the message. Emotions are still deeply intertwined with the surrounding environment, whether it be the color of the walls, the size of a kitchen, or the buildings in the city you live in. We inhabit a place, and our residence there uniquely touches a part of our identity. If this is so, shouldn’t we care what these structures say about us?
Architecture, art, and science are separated by blurry lines, but connected by the common strand of beauty. “Use is in need of beauty to survive,” Valerie Nadeau says. Beatrix Potter highlights the same message through her own studies of mycology, connected intricately with her artistic talent and subsequent eye for observation.
So mycelium is the future, but not just the future for cheaper and more eco-friendly buildings, but also for structures which lie closer to the ideal representation of what we stand for as a society.
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