The Mycological nexus: a meta-synthetic design framework for biochemically remediative and neuro-inclusive urban spaces

Abstract

Urban environments are simultaneously burdened by toxic air pollution and rising mental-health strain, crises that conventional architecture rarely addresses together. This paper proposes a transdisciplinary shift from passive biophilic design to active bio-integration, treating living mycelial networks as genuine design collaborators. Using a Meta-Synthetic Research-through-Design (MS-RtD) approach, we synthesised empirical data from 68 peer-reviewed studies on mycoremediation, mycelium-composite fabrication, and microbial-exposure psychology to develop a fully parametrised, ready-to-fabricate prototype: the Breathing Pod – a modular public installation grown with Pleurotus ostreatus on agricultural waste substrates. Published growth kinematics and branching behaviour were embedded into parametric workflows, yielding a biomorphic lattice with 22–27 % higher surface-area-to-volume ratio than regular geometries. Validated computational fluid dynamics and precedent benchmarking project steady-state reductions of 28–35 % in PM2.5 and 17–24 % in TVOCs inside the Pod under typical tropical urban conditions. Dose-response extrapolation from forest-bathing and “Old Friends” microbiome studies estimates a 22–31 % increase in heart-rate variability and perceived calmness scores of 4.3–4.7 after ten-minute occupancy. These evidence-based projections provide the first integrated proof-of-concept for metabolically active, neuro-inclusive public architecture. The open-source Breathing Pod demonstrates that cities can deploy living fungal systems to simultaneously clean air and calm citizens, offering a scalable, carbon-negative pathway toward resilient and restorative urban futures.