building materials are really starting
to come alive
we humans are natural builders take a
look at some of the amazing things we've
constructed over our history like the
Sphinx or beautiful opera houses or
skyscrapers that are designed to last
long after we're gone
in fact we've talked about innovations
in architecture in previous episodes but
today I really want to focus on the
future of building materials let's take
a look at concrete it's a common
building material and an amazing
technological achievement but it also
comes with some pretty hefty costs
concrete is made by mixing crushed rock
cement and water together and cement is
an energy resource hog in fact the US
Energy Information Administration said
back in 2012 that cement manufacturing
consumed more energy than any other
single manufacturing industry in the
United States bricks and cement have
enormous carbon footprints because
there's a long heating and firing
process involved it almost makes you
wish you could just grow bricks right
out of the ground well we're way ahead
of you slick take a look at a coral reef
what do you see these magnificent
structures are made up of mineral
deposits of calcium carbonate it was
actually created by millions of tiny
organisms the coral itself
ginger Dozier who created a company
called bio Mason actually credits coral
as the inspiration for her approach to
make bricks at ambient temperatures
under certain chemical conditions the
bacterium sporos Arsena pessary I can
actually make calcium carbonate that
same stuff you find in coral reefs now
what you do
is inject this bacteria into a brick
mold containing some sort of aggregate
like sand it binds the aggregate
together and within about five days you
end up with a hardened brick potentially
the coolest factor in this is that you
could build the bricks at the
construction site you would just need
your molds some sort of aggregate made
out of local material and the bacterial
soup technologies like this could have
fantastic applications here on earth
primarily in the area of energy
conservation but we can even look beyond
that let's go to my favorite home away
from home the red planet Mars now if we
want to build habitats on Mars we're
gonna need some construction materials
and I hate to break it to you but bricks
are hard to come by what if instead you
brought along a colony of bacteria it
would be practically weightless to begin
with you add that into molds with
Martian soil and before long Mars bricks
and I'm not just talking pie in the sky
here NASA researchers are actually
looking into this in fact they've
explored ways to use bacteria and other
microorganisms to create everything from
food to antifreeze to building materials
but using bacteria to make bricks isn't
the only way we could harness the
chemistry lab of nature to help us along
what about fungus bricks a New York
architecture firm called The Living
built a 40 foot tall tower out of about
10,000 bricks made from discarded
cornstalks and mycelium mycelium is
fungus fiber so they built a tower of
mushroom bricks now granted you're
probably not gonna build a skyscraper
with these things but they are an
interesting healthy biodegradable
alternative to the bricks we know and
love so dearly it does lead me to a
question for you guys
how do you think we should best harness
biogenic material to better our lives I
want to hear your thoughts in the
comments below
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