MYKOS
The Leadership Team
Overview
Core Values
What sets us apart is our unwavering commitment to using design for environmental repair and stewardship. We define sustainability through consideration of the entire life cycle, aiming for low energetic impact, circularity of materials and humanitarian improvement over profit through design. We are committed to being local and rooted in place and community. Mykos
ecovillage exists for and in Yunnan because of Yunnan's unique strengths: its age-old fungal biodiversity and knowledge; its being a center of agricultural production and waste; its role as a home to traditional ethnic cultures whose people know farming, art and design; its role in tourism owing to its natural beauty; and for its contribution to developing the new bioeconomy in China.
Our Goals
01
First we will build a simple structure this year to prove its structural viability to officials for permitting.
02
We will continue testing the material properties of different species of Mycobricks for understanding and publication. Our team will be in Yunnan during July 2025 building our roots and relationships with various stakeholders.
03
We will cultivate financial support to realize the Mykos project and kickstart the mycomaterials industry in China. Actual Mykos plans, scale, and realization will be determined in the future as we proceed, step by step.
The Leadership Team
Dr. Danting Sun
Professor of Environmental Design at Yunnan Arts University
Dr. Danting Sun is an architect and professor of Environmental Design at the School of Design, Yunnan University of Arts, China.
Dr. Christina Cogdell
Professor of Design at the University of California, Davis
Dr. Christina Cogdell is professor of Design at the University of California, Davis,
Department of Design.
Dr. Valeria La Saponara
Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Davis
The objective of Valeria La Saponara's work is to make a positive impact on communities that have been historically under-served and are economically disadvantaged, inside and outside USA, with low-cost solutions.
Chris Maurer
Founder and Principal Architect of redhouse studio architecture in Cleveland, Ohio
Chris Maurer is the architect and builder of MycoHAB, Namibia, the first structural mycobrick building in the world completed in March 2024.
More About Us
Danting Sun's research and practice focus on the ecological wisdom and sustainable design of ethnic minority residential buildings in Yunnan. The ethnic areas in Yunnan have rich natural architectural traditions (such as adobe, bamboo, etc.), which face conflicts with new building materials in terms of maintenance and renovation. She is from Yunnan, whose unique geographical location and diverse climate conditions have nurtured nearly 900 species of wild mushrooms. Since 2024, she has been collaborating with Professor Christina Cogdell to treat local agricultural waste using local mycelium species, develop mycelial composite materials that are compatible with ethnic minority residential building practices, and preserve the natural scenery of traditional villages.
Dr. Danting Sun
Christina Cogdell is the author of two books exploring the history of biodesign in the 20th and 21st centuries, Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the1930s (2004) and Toward a Living Architecture? Complexism and Biology in Generative Design (2019). She has been teaching Biodesign Theory and Practice at UCD since 2013, and leading UCD’s participation in the Biodesign Challenge since 2018. Outside of work, she has designed and built an adobe studio in New Mexico and enjoys the labor of construction. She is so happy to be collaborating on Mykos with this team.
Dr. Christina Cogdell
I have an unusual background. I have worked for 25+ years on composite materials for engineering applications (aerospace, mechanical, wind energy, naval), using polymers, coatings, nanomaterials, etc. In 2016, I co-founded a start-up to design and manufacture bike helmets for hard-to-fit children. I was the only engineer in a team of 2. Through that experience, as I was searching for a sustainable, chemically safe and affordable replacement of the helmet liner, I came across fungal mycelium "foam" produced by Ecovative Design, Inc. We shut down the company in December 2019. During the COVID-19 pandemic and afterwards, I have been working on fungal mycelium grown on local repurposed agricultural waste for structural applications, particularly wind turbine blades for community-focused wind-based microgrids and disaster relief, as well as mycelium-based materials to reduce greenhouse gases in construction. I have also been researching fungal bioremediation of contaminants such as antibiotics and pesticides.
Dr. Valeria La Saponara
Chris Maurer has lived and worked as an architect in Cleveland, New York City, Anchorage, Firenze, Kigali, and Lilongwe. In New York Chris was director at studioMDA under Markus Dochantschi protégé to Pritzker Prize winning architect Zaha Hadid. In Africa Chris served as director for studioMDA and MASS Design Group and designed and built many humanitarian projects for such clients as Madonna, Partners in Health, the UN Millennium VillageProject, the Clinton Global Initiative, Jeff Gordon Children's Foundation, and Noella Coursaris. Chris founded redhouse studio in Cleveland, Ohio in 2013. redhouse engages in all facets of architecture, from research and innovation in low impact material technologies; design, fabrication, and humanitarian work spanning the globe.
Chris Maurer
Valued Partners
