In April 2022, a consortium led by Eindhoven University of Technology installed the Smart Circular Bridge in Almere—a 15-meter pedestrian span built from flax-fiber biocomposites and embedded with sensors. More than a demo, it’s a live trial for bio-based load-bearing structures. Add to that the field deployment of self-healing concrete on Dutch bridges and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s biocement tests for rapid runway build-outs, and the signal is clear: biomaterials are moving from prototypes to infrastructure—roads, bridges, and utilities designed to adapt rather than just endure.
From Niche Materials to Structural Contenders
For years, biomaterials circulated in design as clever alternatives to plastics and concrete: mushroom-based packaging, bacterial dyes, or bio-bricks pressed from crop waste. But the ambition has shifted. Research centers and start-ups are pushing these materials into structural applications, aiming for durability at the scale of infrastructure.
Take bio-cement, where microbes mineralize sand into solid forms. U.S.-based start-up BioMASON is commercially producing masonry units grown by bacteria, avoiding the high emissions of traditional kilns. At the University of Colorado Boulder, researchers are developing “living building materials” using photosynthetic cyanobacteria to grow prototype structural blocks that actively sequester carbon as they cure. In Europe, the Living Architecture project has created microbial bricks that can clean water and generate electricity while contributing to structural assemblies.
Mycelium, meanwhile, is moving from speculative installations toward applied research. Dutch design labs such as Studio Klarenbeek & Dros are piloting mycelium-based façade panels, exploring how fungal composites could provide insulation and carbon capture. These aren’t yet bridges, but they point to modular bio-components that might slot into tomorrow’s building systems.
Infrastructure That Learns and Repairs
Traditional infrastructure is built to resist change. Roads, tunnels, and pipes are cast, buried, and maintained until they crack or corrode. Biomaterials flip that logic. Because they are living or semi-living systems, they introduce adaptability into what has historically been rigid.
Consider self-healing concrete infused with dormant bacteria that activate when cracks form, sealing fractures before they spread. Dutch company Basilisk has moved this technology out of the lab and into pilot projects across Europe, applying bacterial concrete to tunnels, bridges, and sections of roadway. By reducing maintenance costs and extending lifespan, it reframes infrastructure from a liability into a regenerative system.
Other experiments are testing more responsive or metabolic structures. Research into fungal composites suggests building skins could expand or contract with humidity, adapting passively to environmental shifts. In Hamburg, the BIQ building has been running since 2013 with algae-filled façade panels that generate shade, produce biofuel, and contribute to local carbon cycling—a hybrid model of infrastructure that functions less like a static wall and more like a metabolic system. This reframes infrastructure not as a finished object but as a responsive process. The new design challenge is less about how to reinforce structures against inevitable decay and more about how to choreograph cycles of growth, adaptation, and repair.
Cities as Bio-Networks, Not Machines
Infrastructure defines how cities breathe, move, and metabolize resources. Treating it as a living network rather than a mechanical system opens a radically different urban design agenda. Imagine wastewater treatment plants seeded with microbial communities that both filter waste and generate energy. Roads under study that deploy bio-based chemical reactions to repair micro-fractures before potholes appear. Building skins that photosynthesize, offsetting emissions and producing usable biomass. These are not speculative fantasies but directions already tested through funded research and pilot projects.
The ecological stakes are high. Global infrastructure demand is projected to triple by 2060, locking in enormous material footprints. Cement and steel alone account for around 15 percent of global CO₂ emissions. Biomaterials that sequester carbon while providing structural function could help redirect that trajectory, reframing infrastructure as a partner in ecological cycles rather than an extraction-heavy burden.
Reliability, however, is the choke point. Infrastructure failures are catastrophic, and the unpredictability of living systems makes regulators cautious. For now, hybrid models—where bio-based composites are integrated with conventional materials—are the likeliest route to adoption. Success will depend not just on novelty but on demonstrating consistency across decades of use.
The Next Material Transition
Treating biomaterials as infrastructure raises deeper questions than whether they “work.” Who governs materials once they are alive within public works? How do building codes adapt to substances that grow, regenerate, or decay? And how should value be calculated when performance includes carbon sequestration, biodiversity, or air purification alongside traditional metrics of strength and longevity?
The answers will determine whether biomaterials remain experimental or become foundational to urban life. The promise of roads that repair themselves, bridges informed by microbial processes, and façades that metabolize carbon is less about aesthetics than about systemic change. Infrastructure has always been invisible until it fails; biomaterials demand that we see it differently—not as a fixed asset but as a living partner in the design of cities.
For designers, engineers, and policymakers, this is not about swapping concrete for fungi. It is about rewriting the cultural and technical frameworks that define infrastructure. Biomaterials suggest that the cities of the future may not only be built but cultivated—systems that grow with us rather than against us.
