Living building material

A living building material (LBM) is a material used in construction or industrial design that behaves in a way resembling a living organism. Examples include: self-mending biocement, self-replicating concrete replacement, and mycelium-based composites for construction and packaging. Artistic projects include building components and household items. The development of living building materials began with research of methods for mineralizing concrete, that were inspired by coral mineralization. The use of microbiologically induced calcite precipitation (MICP) in concrete was pioneered by Adolphe et al. in 1990, as a method of applying a protective coating to building façades. In 2007, "Greensulate", a mycelium-based building insulation material was introduced by Ecovative Design, a spin off of research conducted at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Mycelium composites were later developed for packaging, sound absorption, and structural building materials such as bricks. In the United Kingdom, the Materials for Life (M4L) project was founded at Cardiff University in 2013 to "create a built environment and infrastructure which is a sustainable and resilient system comprising materials and structures that continually monitor, regulate, adapt and repair themselves without the need for external intervention." M4L led to the UK's first self-healing concrete trials. In 2017 the project expanded into a consortium led by the universities of Cardiff, Cambridge, Bath and Bradford, changing its name to Resilient Materials 4 Life (RM4L) and receiving funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. This consortium focuses on four aspects of material engineering: self-healing of cracks at multiple scales; self-healing of time-dependent and cycling loading damage; self-diagnosis and healing of chemical damage; and self-diagnosis and immunization against physical damage. In 2016 the United States Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched the Engineered Living Materials (ELM) program.