All-natural materials promote ‘regenerative’ architecture

Sourced from an upstate New York farm, several dozen straw bales could have ended up like many others this time of year - props in pumpkin patches, fall photo shoots and Halloween décor, before being discarded.

Marta H. Wisniewska, lecturer in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP) and director of the Regenerative Architecture Lab, prizes them as a more valuable resource: an abundant agricultural byproduct that can be tapped as a sustainable building material.

In "BaleWorks," a design-build installation Wisniewska constructed recently for BuildFest 2026 at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, New York, densely stacked bales form the interior walls of an open, wood-frame structure whose purpose will evolve over several years. Initially a campground shelter and performance stage, it will transition into a lavatory, while weathered straw is replaced with fresh bales and repurposed for soil remediation.

"At a time when we're trying to decarbonize the built environment and use less petroleum-based materials, we want to show the potential of natural, renewable and innovative alternatives," Wisniewska said. "Now may be the perfect time to rethink how we build and help people feel more confident using these materials in their own buildings."

The project is Wisniewska's latest exploring how natural and living building materials - also including mycelium, hemp and dirt - can create healthier spaces and mitigate the construction industry's substantial environmental impact. Buildings over their lifecycles are responsible for nearly 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and construction and demolition debris is a major contributor to landfills.

"Addressing this challenge requires a fundamental shift from a 'take-make-dispose' economy," Wisniewska said, "toward a paradigm that integrates biological processes and minimizes waste."

Her contribution involves researching bio-based materials' capabilities with experts across the fields of plant and fiber science, landscape architecture and engineering; educating students, practitioners and policymakers; and advocating for material consideration before designs dictate more conventional approaches.

"Material decisions are never without costs," she said. "Each material has social, health and environmental consequences related to their extraction, production and disposal."

Growing numbers of designers, builders and planners share those concerns. In May, Wisniewska presented her lab's work to an annual summit of the Bio-Based Materials Collective, a Hudson Valley-based organization with more than 1,000 members, started in 2023 with the goal of rapidly scaling plant-based materials across North America.

"It's so important that our future designers have tactile experience with natural building materials, and the Regenerative Architecture Lab provides that," said James Kitchin, a summit organizer and director of the Abundant Futures Design Lab at the nonprofit Model of Architecture Serving Society.

Wisniewska's recent work also includes:

Home:Grown: In this building technology elective course offered earlier this year spring, students experimented with mycelium-bound composites harnessing the vegetative part of fungi, whose branching, thread-like hyphae act as a naturally growing and biodegradable glue.

The class participants cultivated mycelium-based substrates and stored them in an environmentally controlled chamber to promote further growth. A couple of weeks later, they returned to fill rigid molds and fabric formwork of their own design with a fully colonized composites. After several more weeks of mycelium growth, they dried the resulting hardened bricks, panels and tubes in a solar oven. Students proposed applications from interlocking wall elements, roof tiles to insulative curtains, and the incorporation of natural dyes.

The class built on lab studies analyzing the strengths and weaknesses for different applications of roughly 40 strains of mycelium, in collaboration with Kathie Hodge, associate professor of plant science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and director of the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium, also known on campus as the "mushroom museum."

Increasing the work's bio-resilience, Wisniewska and Connor Youngerman, an agroforestry and mushroom specialist with the Cornell Small Farms Program, are partnering with local edible mushroom producers to reuse their substrate - typically a waste product - for MBC production, supported by the Cornell Einhorn Center for Community Engagement.