Living Building Materials offers more Sustainable Construction Methods

​With over 15 years of creative construction experience in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Ted Vitale graduated from Monmouth University with a degree in accounting. Ted Vitale continually looks for the latest innovative construction techniques and materials, including living building materials.

The primary rage over the last decade has been smart homes, sustainable building processes, and materials. One of the recent innovations is living building materials. The materials replicate the functionality and capabilities of a living organism and reproduce, self-heal and self-replicate. The premise behind living building materials is that traditional building materials, even sustainable types, all harm the environment, albeit in varying degrees.

A living building material is nature itself but provides a living space. One of the most publicized living building materials is a bacteria brick. Developed by the University of Colorado Boulder, the bacteria absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and synthesize calcium carbonate, an essential constituent of limestone and cement. The resulting brick, from tests, proved to be a durable, regular brick.

Another living building material is bio cement. Natural microorganisms similarly synthesize cement from carbon dioxide in the air. The research owners, Biomason, are the only company known to commercially produce cement using this method and tiles, known as Bioliths, for construction. Other living building materials include self-healing concrete and self-healing silica. For the two, fungi spores are mixed with traditional building materials during construction. The spores remain dormant until cracks appear, where water and oxygen ingress triggers rapid growth, thus sealing the cracks.

Ted Vitale

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