AI helps grow mushroom-based panels that quiet noisy rooms
Mycelium Materials
If you've ever grown reishi mushrooms on a log in your yard or basement, that same fungus is now being engineered into building panels, showing how the living material you already cultivate could end up insulating the walls around you.
Scientists grew a fungus called reishi through a biodegradable 3D-printed scaffold to make solid panels that absorb sound, the same way foam panels do in recording studios. Instead of designing the panel shape by hand, they let a computer program test thousands of surface patterns and pick the ones that spread sound best, while a separate algorithm designed tiny internal air channels so the fungus could breathe and grow evenly. They built a small test panel and a much larger one to prove the method scales up, all using tools a small maker space could realistically own.
Key Findings
A genetic algorithm optimized panel surface patterns for sound diffusion using acoustic simulations of a 6x4x3m room, run through Rhino-Grasshopper and the Pachyderm plug-in.
A separate proximity algorithm designed a 3D-printed biodegradable wood-PLA scaffold that acts as an internal aeration network to boost oxygen flow and fungal growth within the panel.
Two working prototypes were built and grown, a 15x15cm proof-of-concept and a 40x40cm scaled-up panel, using CNC-milled MDF molds, vacuum-formed PET, and Ganoderma lucidum mycelium.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers used AI-driven design algorithms alongside a living fungus, Ganoderma lucidum, to grow sound-absorbing acoustic panels, shaping both the panel's surface pattern and an internal air channel network that helps the fungus grow. The project shows how digital design and living materials can team up to make functional building materials that are grown rather than manufactured.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Beyond Symbiosis: Co-Creating Sustainable Acoustic Panels with Mycelium and AI
Abstract The Beyond Symbiosis series explores the integration of non-human biological organisms and Artificial Intelligence as performance-driven co-creators in a more-than-human design future. Unl...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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Lingzhi, also known as reishi, is a polypore fungus native to East Asia belonging to the genus Ganoderma.