What if there was an alternative to buildings made from concrete, steel and glass? Many of those materials—especially concrete—are very energy intensive to produce. This week on Spark, we look at some of the ways architects are trying to incorporate living materials into building construction, or create spaces that seem alive in the sense that they interact with us in a fundamental way. Could our future homes be living things?

+ Phil Ayres is an architect in Copenhagen, and he's working with mycelium, the fibrous network that supports mushrooms and other fungi—and is, as it turns out, a great building material!

+ Philip Beesley is a Toronto architect and sculptor who leads the Living Architecture Systems Group, which explores—and pushes—the boundaries of interactive spaces, using both biological and fabricated material.