The state of the environment continues to make headlines, and the news is usually bleak. From the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 12-year warning to the growing number of extreme weather catastrophes, it’s hard not to get discouraged when thinking about our global future.
Luckily, some people are channelling that anxiety into positive change — and Concordia master’s student Théo Chauvirey is one of them. He is using the power of biomaterials as a sustainable approach to metro design.
His means to get there might seem like an unlikely one: fungus. Chauvirey is working with mycelium, which is the white filamentous matter that grows in soil and produces mushrooms.
“It’s lightweight, strong, fire retardant and completely compostable,” he explains.
“My research aims to investigate how to integrate mycelium-based biomaterials in public transport design, as well as how to phase out oil-based fibreglass-reinforced composites.”