We've designed a building where, if the bricks break, they grow back, if we need new quarters, we grow them. This building is based on nanotech and plants, and we're happy to say, it's working well, even for the humans. -- Fighting Fit
First: bricks should not break. There's something about the clay here that doesn't bind properly, and shipping the right kind of clay would end up costing Years[1]. A more local solution is more amenable than a distant one, after all.
Me? I was inspired by the remains of Angkor Wat, and the trees simultaneously knocking the buildings down and holding them up. With nanites and cellulose and a certain amount of gengineering jiggery-pokery...
We came up with self-healing bricks. They don't need mortar, they just... splice themselves. With the help of a little brick butter, of course.
That stuff's the real genius. A solvent for the 'crust to lay it bare, then the little nanites to encourage the inner core of the material to literally grow together. There's still seams, but the end result is a lot more stable than you might want to believe. A lot more amenable as a building material than fungal bricks, too.
Yeah. Fungal bricks. They work well enough, but when you have a damp environment, you need to worry about spores. Or cross-breeding. And no, using food fungus does not help as much as you might think it would. Also, lots of people are highly reactive to spores. They tend to use anti-fungal paint on their walls and - guess what? That kills the fungus that keeps your buildings together.
What could have possibly predicted that easily-predictable and inevitable disaster?
Don't get me wrong. There's still people who are allergic to my grow-bricks. For those, we either work with the local flora to find something they can live with, or print other materials to make their homes.
Lithoprinting takes a great deal of energy. We try to keep it for a last resort. Honestly, it's easier to build a house out of quarried rock than re-melted gravel. Not that we have a lot of rock to quarry.
We're trying to recreate limestone chemically just so we can have concrete.
So far? The grow-bricks are easier.
[1] In the Galactic Alliance, the phrase "time is money" is more literal than one might think.
[Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash]
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