The Living is building Princeton’s new robotics lab and has done work for Kanye West, but it leapt into new prominence with Hy Fi, a 41-foot organic tower (below) of bricks made from chopped up corn stalks and mycelium, a fibrous branching mushroom that fuses with any waste plant in about five days without the need for energy or sunlight. These bio-bricks could theoretically be made anywhere and at scale for as little as 20 cents. There’s no waste or carbon emitted in their manufacture and at the end of their useful life you can crumble them back into the soil within 60 days. The process was developed by Ecovative, an innovative startup in Green Island, N.Y. that makes mushroom-based packaging and furniture. Mixing in a high-tech touch, the tower was lit from above using a new specular film from 3M that’s more reflective than any glass mirror. Hy-Fi, winner of the Museum of Modern Art’s coveted Young Architects competition, stood outside MoMA PS1 in Queens, N.Y. for two months this summer.

Another experimental front is computational design, in which software takes over from puny humans and races through thousands of simulations to come up with the optimal structure for an airplane, race car or HVAC system based on the rules and constraints laid out by those humans. The object above is what chairs will look like if we let computers design them instead of people. Architect David Benjamin started with a simple solid chair then applied some design software to take out some weight and then had the computer figure out on its own what the optimal design should be for maximum weight and minimum displacement. What emerged was a stronger seat that weighs a mere 6.4 pounds, 70% lighter than the solid chair. It was produced in one shot out of a 3-D printer. Algorithm-generated design software, which Autodesk plans to release next year under the name Dreamcatcher, is starting to produce inhumanly complex and beautiful concepts for lightweight airplanes and bicycles and more efficient heat exchangers.