Buildings are not permanent, yet we design and construct them as though they are meant to last forever. Their apparent permanence is sustained through a linear sequence of temporary states: construction, occupation, repair, and eventual demolition and landfill. Contemporary wall assemblies, including light wood framing, cross-laminated timber (CLT) and structural insulated panels (SIP), depend on tightly bonded layers of membranes, insulation, and petrochemical adhesives. While these systems achieve high technical performance, they are difficult to repair, impossible to disassemble, and ultimately destined for landfill, embedding design for disposal within the logic of contemporary construction.
Today’s construction paradigm defines strength as resistance to change, the capacity of a system to remain fixed, stable, and unchanged under load. In biology, strength operates differently. Biological strength is not the refusal of change, but the ability to absorb variation and without failure, to deform, adapt, heal, and remain resilient through transformation. This thesis begins from that distinction, proposing architecture as a constructed ecology rather than a static assembly of fixed layers destined for landfill.
The thesis rethinks conventional SIP construction as a time-based material system through pregrown mycelium-wood bilayers that are biowelded on site into a compostable assembly. Tapping into the active biological behaviors of living mycelium, seams are not treated as weaknesses that must resist change, but as active zones of growth through which material continuity is produced. By treating mycelium as both binder and insulation, the thesis proposes a circular building system that reduces waste, labor, and embodied carbon, while rendering growth legible as architectural form over time.