161: ‘Project Phoenix, Part 3: Innovating with Mycelium’, with David Benjamin and Thomas van Haren

161: ‘Project Phoenix, Part 3: Innovating with Mycelium’, with David Benjamin and Thomas van Harenz

Evan Troxel: [00:00:00] welcome to the TRXL podcast. I'm Evan Troxel. In this episode, I am joined once again by David Benjamin from Autodesk and Thomas van Haren from Ecovative in the final installment in this three part series on Project Phoenix. Thomas van Haren is Ecovative's Chief Operating Officer, where he is responsible for the raw materials and mycelium composite business lines across the United States and Europe. Ecovative is scaling its mycelium technology to provide an alternative for industrial farming and to replace plastics. You know, no big deal, right? He graduated from London School of Economics and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

David Benjamin leads applied research on net zero buildings at Autodesk Research. His work combines research and practice with a focus on an expanded and actionable framework of [00:01:00] environmental sustainability. Over the past several years, his team has explored generative design, low carbon materials, and reusable design intelligence for the built environment.

Today we are discussing the journey of creating sustainable building materials using mycelium. The history of Autodesk and Ecovative's partnership and the evolution from demonstration projects to scalable solutions. Insights on the importance of digital workflows. The challenges and innovations in building facades.

And the incredible versatility of Mycelium as a materials platform. And we also talk about the potential of Mycelium to revolutionize various industries. And the urgent need for scalable carbon negative solutions in architectural building materials and beyond.

Before we get into today's conversation, once again, please do me a couple of favors if you haven't already. If you're enjoying these episodes, please subscribe to the show on YouTube and in your [00:02:00] favorite podcast app to let me know that you're a fan. And if you're watching on YouTube, please click that like button too, just under the video. It really helps. And finally, if you'd like to get an email when episodes are published with all of the links and other information about the episode and the guests, sign up at TRXL.co, where you can find every episode of the show, including parts 1 and 2 of this series. This was a fantastic conversation with Thomas and David and I hope you'll not only find value in it for yourself But that you'll help add value to the profession by spreading it. So now without further ado I bring you my conversation with Thomas van Haren and David Benjamin for the final part three of the Project Phoenix series

​

Evan Troxel: Today I'm joined by David Benjamin and Thomas van Haren and David works at Autodesk. Thomas works at [00:03:00] Ecovative and these are both companies that have come together on Project Phoenix, which we've talked about in the past on previous episodes.

Today, I'm especially excited because as an architect, we're going to be talking about building materials and unconventional building materials at that I'm going to, I'm going to bury the lead for a few more minutes here Until we hear about this interesting, um, new development, at least new to me, and uh, I'm going to let you start, David, and if you could tell us kind of the, about this partnership between Autodesk and Ecovative, how long that's been going on, is this the first project that you've collaborated together on?

I have, I have a, burning sense that the answer is no. I mean, it takes a while to, to come to something this innovative. So kick us off with a story about how this partnership was started.

David Benjamin: Great. Well, thanks, Evan.

David Benjamin-1: So for me, the story began about 10 years ago,

um, when I was working

on a

project with my team, um, as part of an, an invited competition

run by the [00:04:00] Museum of Modern

Art, uh, called the Young Architects Program.

And this was a

really interesting program that

invited young architecture firms, kind of unproven architecture firms, to propose an innovative idea. for a pavilion

in the courtyard of

MoMA PS1,

uh, for the

summer. And at the time, uh, we were very interested in sustainability, in materials, and particularly in biomaterials. And, um, we, came across the amazing things that Ecovative was doing with materials. And Ecovative was basically, and Thomas, you can describe more about this in a moment, but Ecovative was, um, creating materials, functional, useful materials out of mycelium, which is the root like structure of mushrooms, and agricultural waste, which is like the byproduct of growing corn or other crops. And, um, [00:05:00] Ecovative was taking this stuff and making materials for packaging and maybe some other applications. And we thought, being architects, that we would love to use this same material to make bricks, to make architectural load bearing bricks, to make a structure. And we got in contact with Ecovative and took the train from New York City up to their facility in upstate New York and kind of proposed our idea. And, uh, Ecovative, um, I think it was Evan and Gavin at the time, Thomas, and, and they, uh, uh, kind of listened to our proposal and thought it was pretty interesting. We talked about, you know, different, uh, strengths of the material, different ways that the Ecovative makes it. And at the end, they basically said, well, we're probably going to pass.

Um, you know, they, they thought that, um. that they didn't necessarily want to get involved in that project. And [00:06:00] I learned later a little, some of the reasons, some of the challenges for that, some of the difficulties of different markets and liability issues and things like that. But in the end, after more discussion, some back and forth, us kind of pleading our case a little more, um, and some testing that we did, um, we. Figured out that we, we actually could make, um, a structure out of this material and, uh, we created a 40 foot tall tower, um, uh, out of about 10, 000 bricks. So I always think like more than just a few units, more than just one story building to test out whether this material making load bearing bricks out of mycelium material could actually work. And it was generally, um, you know, pretty successful, pretty well received. Um, and just to, to kind of wrap up the story, we can, we can talk about any [00:07:00] details of that if it's, if it's relevant, but this was, uh, almost 10 years ago, exactly. And, uh, because the project was at MoMA, it got a lot of attention from architects, but really more attention probably from the general public. And one of the questions that I was asked most frequently at that time was something like, uh, yeah, this is interesting, but when is this going to be in a real building? And, you know, it was, like, annoying to me. We had worked so hard just to get this, like, thing, and it was big, and, you know, it took so much engineering.

We had other partners, including the, uh, great structural engineers at Arup, and, uh, you know, great people building with us, and New York City brickmasons stacking this thing. You know, we did all this hard work, and people were kind of dismissing it, but at the same time, I knew that was exactly the right question to be asking.

Evan Troxel: you made it, you obviously just made it look easy, right? Like this was one of those things where it's like, well, it, nobody sees [00:08:00] the 10 year long struggle to success. They only see the success part. Right. And so building materials are proven over time. And so there's this, probably this automatic assumption, right?

Which is, which is like, okay, where are we going next? Right. We're always, where are we going next? So I, I love that it kind of. perturbed you a little bit because you're like, you don't even know what it took to get here.

David Benjamin-1: Right. Let's talk about like how, yeah, how far we've come. And, but people just want to, you know, but, but I knew that, that, that that was, uh, you know, the right question. And I think at the time I said something like, you know, cause I had learned from, from Ecovative about this material and the possibilities.

And I said, you know, based on my experience in the past year. know, bringing this to life, um, I'm pretty confident that in about 10 years, you know, we'll be able to have this in, in a real building, in a real permanent, you know, regular functional building. I did not necessarily think that I would. [00:09:00] Uh, be part of a team with you, Thomas, and others to, to bring that to life, but, you know, and, and both Ecovative and, you know, me and my team, we did many different things over those 10 years, but we've come back together just recently, um, to, to try to bring this to life in a real building.

Yeah.

Evan Troxel: so Thomas, now I'm, I'm really interested in where you enter the picture, right? Because now, now David kind of painted that story of, of how you got to, to maybe where we are and where we're going with, with Project Phoenix and what we saw at Autodesk University.

But tell us your story and how you got involved at Ecovative.

Thomas van Haren: Yeah. And just going back briefly to what David just said about, you know, people asking, you know, when is this an actual building? You know, it's interesting because, you know, you need some visionary people who see it, who see the application, who actually see the future in it. And, you know, obviously we always refer to David as, uh, being one of them and, you know, the early, the early [00:10:00] adaptor when it comes to building materials. But at the same time, you know, Ecovative has now been around for Uh, 16, almost 17

years, uh, and we joke internally that. we are the world's leading, uh, mycelium

construction materials business, yet we have never used, um, any mycelium materials in an actual building. So it tells you, it kind of shows you how

long it takes for something like that to be, Um,

not just to gain interest, right?

Because there's a lot of interest in mycelium, There's a lot of, interest in, in kind of the technology. um.

but bringing it to life in a real life project, is a completely different, uh, story. Uh, so yeah, that, that's, that's really where we are today. and yes, that took 10 years, right? Or, or, or longer than that because, uh, and I guess maybe that's, uh, maybe that's a good segue to explaining kind of how,

Ecovative got there. um, so business was founded by, uh, Eben Beyer and uh, Gavin McIntyre back in 2000. Eight. Uh, right out of college, uh, [00:11:00] they did a uh, inventors class where they came up with a way to bind agricultural waste materials using mycelium as a agriculture, as a, as a, as kind of nature's glue, right? So it's a binding process, uh, where the mycelium, um, self assembles and, and binds together agricultural waste products. Um, initially, uh, that was actually focused on two things. um,

Packaging and building materials. Uh, we

have made, uh, things, uh,

variety of things, in, in the building, uh, in construction material space, uh, ranging from, uh, ewood and,

bricks to insulation. Uh, and so we have spent, uh, kind of a, a long period of

time since the inception, uh, of the business, um, trying to commercialize.

That product, uh, as well as our packaging, uh,

product, um, along the way, you know, you kind of start to find out how hard it

is

specifically in industries. Like

packaging, uh, and by [00:12:00] construction materials, um, how long the cycles are, right? So it takes a very long time to get first people to buy into the product, uh, to test it themselves, to validate it as a useful, um, and and valid, uh, alternative material.

And then you need to go through the entire cycle of you know, getting

it approved and, you know, having people actually utilize it and value it in a way, um, that fits with how Ecovative values it. Right. And so along the

way, we came up with different technologies to use mycelium as well.

Um, today, uh, our largest products are actually not what we call the micro composites technology, which, um, we're talking about today.

Um, but we are focused largely on growing a hundred percent mycelium tissue. Slabs in traditional, uh, mushroom growing facilities that

we harvest and either treat into uh, bacon, a vegan bacon, uh, under our brand name, My Forest Foods, um, or [00:13:00] into leather and elastomeric foams. so,

those are slightly different than the technology we're talking about today. um, that is 100 percent mycelium. microcomposites, mycelium is just one of the ingredients,

Evan Troxel: Mm. Mm

Thomas van Haren: and so yeah, when David came to

us, um, to kind of take a look again at, um, building materials,

really we would have said no to everyone except for David, because David is one of those

people who has, uh, who has a long standing history with us um, and, uh, who has the vision to bring that to

life. And so, uh, I think about a year ago, David, we started talking about how do we bring uh, Mycidium panels

into, Um, the market as

an alternative for um, EPS foam. And so, yeah, that's what we've been working on since.

David Benjamin-1: Thomas, I'm glad

you're reminding me

and and everyone else of.

the amazing other things that can be created with mycelium. And

that's, that's a [00:14:00] whole other, that's just such a mind blowing

thing that one living organism, you know, can be used in one

way for food, in another way for packaging, and another way for building materials. and another

way for clothing like, uh, materials. Um, but I just wanted to emphasize that, um, Something that's been really important for me is, I think my thinking changed over the past 10 years. I'm just as excited about mycelium materials as I was 10 years ago. But, um, one, one part of the equation for me is the importance of going from demonstration project to scale up. And 10 years ago, I. was more focused on demonstration project and, and the world needs good demonstration projects, you know, innovation, but especially in decarbonization and climate and architecture, [00:15:00] we need to rapidly scale up. You know, we can't just have another 10 years of good demonstration projects without the scale up.

We need the demonstration projects, but we equally need the scale up. So, When we started talking together again, Thomas, you know, a year ago or so, we were very much focused on the scale of not only on getting this in a real building, but on what I have been calling like a drop in solution. Um, you know, something that can be used with today's building codes and certifications and construction processes. It can be dropped right in. You know, kind of like biofuel can be dropped in to today's vehicles and we can start using it today. So we were interested in, I mean, in a way, Phoenix is both. It's a demonstration project, but it's also a critical step on this [00:16:00] scale up, because if we can make it in this real building and get through all of those, you know, steps to prove that it can be done, then we hope it will unlock, you know, a lot more scale up.

Evan Troxel: To your point, David, I think a lot of people have probably watched the Fantastic Fungi documentary on Netflix and the application mycelium is incredible, right? Like across the range. And I mean, going back to Ecovative's beginnings is you said that this started out as a, as a research project in school.

Was that right? So like, how did that, where did this initial spark to pursue Potentially building products, I assume at that time, maybe, maybe there was like a giant map on the wall of all the, the opportunities and there was like focusing in, but was it the two founders who were just like inspired to say, how can we apply this to building products?

I mean, that it's just incredible to think of how far this has come in, in what is really a relatively short amount of [00:17:00] time.

Thomas van Haren: Yeah. And, and Evan tells this story much better, obviously, because it's his experience. Um, but he grew up on a farm and, uh, kind of took that knowledge, uh, with him to college. And when he did a, um, yeah, an inventor's class with Bert Swersy, uh, a professor at, uh, RPI, um, they came up with, uh, using mycelium as, uh, as a natural glue. And I think he's done that course once and the second time around Gavin joined him and then that they Spun after college they spun that business or that project really into a business but yeah, I think you know to answer your question on, uh, you know, when, how does that go? Right. I think it's, uh, it's as many startups, um, you start working on one thing and that leads you to the next thing. Uh, and that's really a very simplistic way of explaining, um, how Ecovative evolved throughout the years as [00:18:00] well. Right. Before, because, um, before

Ecovative, there was no, mycelium industry. You know, mycelium as an alternative material did not exist before Eben and Gavin came up with this product, uh, back in, in 2007 or 2008.

Uh, really mycelium was only used for, um, you know, uh, uh, uh, inoculating substrate for the commercial mushroom growing industry, uh, not for using mycelium and eventually mycelium would pin into a mushroom, right?

Um, it was not used as an alternative material before they started working on this. Today, there are tons and tons of uh, startups and businesses working on Mycelium with Mycelium, uh, whether that's with our patents and with our IP or not.

Um, You know, there's a lot of interest in it and, um, you know, partially triggered by documentaries like Fantastic Fungi and there's a bunch of other ones out there, as well. Um, but,

to really drive that point home, you know, the,

the the, the [00:19:00] Ecovator evolving as a business from packaging and, and, uh, and building materials to bacon and leather that all, you know, obviously went Like this, but it's one invention that led to the next One right?

So, um, if you look at our material, for example, the bricks that we use, there's a thin layer of

what we call overgrowth. on the micro composites products. Um, And, that overgrowth is a hundred percent mycelium and that led us to the innovation

to use a hundred percent mycelium as an alternative

material as well. um,

so yeah, it's, it's definitely a very, very interesting path. Um, we have a lot of licensees around the,

world. Uh, last year, Uh, September, we actually decided to open, uh, the, microcomposites patent, uh, up in Europe, uh, Europe, UK, and Israel, uh, under, uh, the open patent program for that particular region, um,

and we did that to, you know, get the technology into more people's hands, um, to

drive more innovation,

uh, and because there was so

much interest, [00:20:00] particularly coming from Europe, Um, with people who wanted to get their hands on the material and the

technology. and we decided that it would be best,

uh, for, for that technology to be shared with more people so that we drive more innovation and to David's point, You know, get to a faster adaptation of using that material in real life, right?

Because we're definitely not there yet specifically in particular

with, uh, the composites technology.

Um, we're a long way. from having all the uh, EPS and styrofoam in packaging being replaced by, uh, uh, by

mycelium based packaging. And, um, we're probably further away, uh, on construction material uh, construction materials to

be

Evan Troxel: Mm hmm.

Thomas van Haren: Um, so there's, there's a lot of innovation

and a lot of scaling up that needs to happen.

Uh, and I tell actually, Everyone in Europe that I speak with about our Open Pattern program, I tell all of them don't focus on substrate, don't focus on the strain, focus on scalability. you need to figure out a way to scale this to make [00:21:00] it as cost competitive as your EPS or, you know, your, your incumbent materials.

That is the only way, in which you're going to, build this into a real business And

make an impact. Um. But in the end, it will have to be, uh, adopted by, um, you know, people like David and people like Factory OS and, you know, the architects behind the project. And, yeah, we're really excited to see, um, the excitement, uh, on the Phoenix project.

It's

had a lot of, a lot of exposure and people are really genuinely excited about it. So, yeah, it's great to be part of that.

Evan Troxel: So obviously Autodesk was looking for an innovation partner when it came to this kind of application of, of an innovative product on, on building, on a building. But David, where does the digital thinking come into the, the actual physical product of the mycelium panel system? Right.

David Benjamin-1: I, think if, if we think about [00:22:00] how

buildings get made and, you know, Evan, you're, you're an expert on this. Um, there's a lot of players. There's a

lot of,

um, aspirations for each project, constraints for each

project. There's, um,

a lot of. potential risk, um, and we realized that if we were going to scale up mycelium, materials

and other carbon negative materials.

so I hope we can get back to,

to that way I'm thinking about it now,

um, need those materials to be part of digital

workflows, you know, so you think about

how Um, we get, uh,

how ideas get started

and how things get modeled in

the

computer, how a design for a project gets

passed from an architect to an engineer, um, how the [00:23:00] design

advances through the stages, how things get communicated to contractors,

how things get, um, certified, priced, um,

Analyze for sustainability impact and all of that.

It's really

important for there to be data about you know things

whether that's the geometry or the materials or other

aspects and you know some way of Analyzing and comparing things and these days That's

basically software You know, it's many

kinds of

software. It's not only Autodesk software,

but it's but a lot of that is software.

So,

um, another way of looking at the

whole problem of decarbonizing

architecture, even independent of mycelium materials, but I think I'm going to try to

describe where these things

intersect, um, is If we're going to

decarbonize architecture, we need to

reduce the operational carbon. There are a lot of good digital tools for that and

designs [00:24:00] and even traditional practices.

We need to be able to model and simulate

that, but also increasingly

the embodied carbon of materials. and thankfully, a lot of architects, people in AEC

are paying attention to that now. But as

soon

as you're thinking about embodied carbon and materials. You need precedence. You need to be able to simulate

the structural performance of different material options. You need to

know the exact carbon footprint of different materials, amount of

embodied carbon. And So,

we thought, you know, as we were trying to

do some of this innovation, that it's not only the physical

buildings of Phoenix that will help,

you know, Be one step on,

potentially scaling up, but it's also getting that

material innovation into digital workflows. And so, um, we've been, um, not only trying to

[00:25:00] simulate the material to figure out what its performance is for

things like structure,

noise dampening. Thermal performance. Um, and those are all really critical and those help us unlock some cost benefits.

Um, so we need to do that simulation.

Some of that's in the computer, some of that's, uh, physical testing.

Um, also fire, fire

testing. Um, but then we need to

have that. information available for the next designer who's going to come along or engineer or building owner who might want to use this and including one of the

latest things we've been doing is a

full life cycle assessment of the material so that we can basically, you know, know in a high degree of detail with third party verification how this material

performs in terms of sustainability. So anyway, that was a long answer of how we think like,

you know, if you're going to

scale up innovative materials.

You need, you know, the physical [00:26:00] implementation, but you also need the kind of digital

thread that's going to help other people do it,

in The future

Evan Troxel: Absolutely. You mentioned risk and, you know, as an architect, I just got back from the National AIA Conference on Architecture and there's a bunch of exhibitors there all showing off their building products. And I think as an architect, a lot of, well, as architects normally do, they want to see it in, they want to see the application of it before they use it.

Which is hard when you're talking about a new material, right? And so to speak to your scale point of view, right? And getting it out there, getting it used, having all the testing. in line and at the ready for when people ask for it. I mean, all of that plays into the adoption of new building products. And we want, our reputation relies on these things performing like you say they're going to, right.

And like you've modeled. And so it's, this is a long process. I can't imagine how hard that [00:27:00] actually is to embark on. I mean, to talk about risk, you've taken a ton of that risk, Thomas, evocative, right? Sorry, I said it wrong, I said it wrong, with, with Ecovative to actually put in the, the funding and the time and the science and the manufacturing and doing all of this to actually get it to the point at which somebody can actually say yes to using a new innovative product on a building.

And even then, they're likely like the first ones in their area doing it and that's risky for them. Um, and so you have to be able to say, You know, we're partners in this. And so I'm, I'm wondering what the, what is the story that you, you're telling people publicly with a product being used on a project like Phoenix to say, like there, there is trust in this and there's a relationship and there's collaboration and there's, we've got your back and like, how does that all go?

Because I can only imagine how hard it is [00:28:00] to, Like this is, to me, it's a new product category, and when you're talking about a new category, it's like, no thanks, I'll use what I've been using for the last 20 years on my projects, and that's just kind of normal when it goes for architects. So how do you start to kind of get over the objections of introducing a new material category into the building and construction industry?

Mm

Thomas van Haren: Well, let me, let me first, and then David, please jump in. But you know, it's not just hard. It's also very, very frustrating, right? Because like, there's a lot of people who are interested in it, but actually taking that step to commercially adapt it is, you know, completely different story. And you know, to, to David's point on, um, you know, doing a pilot or doing something in a lab or doing something very, very small scale, but actually bringing it to a real sized project is a completely different ball game. Um, I think, um, for me, the reason, [00:29:00] Why it has, uh, a higher degree, uh, higher likelihood of succeeding, uh, in the Phoenix project is because you have, uh, you know, all key stakeholders and all parties together, uh, all pulling for the same thing, right? It's generally one stakeholder that wants to bring a product in. And then there's lots of other parties who then start looking at it and saying, Ah, this is the reason why we can't do it. This is all for the price or, you know, the testing or whatever it may be. In this case, you know, you have the architecture firm, you have the developer, you have the panel manufacturer, you have Ecovative and you have David's team, all coming together with one shared goal. And that's to actually bring this product into a real market. Uh, building and I think that's the game changer here is having all those people together and that's completely, uh, to David's credit that, you know, he brought that group together and said, let's take a look at if we can actually do this, right?

Forget about a mockup or, or a lab scale. Let's see if we can actually bring this to life. Um, yeah. David, jump in with

David Benjamin-1: Yeah, I, no, [00:30:00] I mean, I, I love that description and that, that was really true. And that was one of the most exciting things about, about the project that it really, we did have all of these stakeholders working together. You know, with the same big picture goal in mind, you know, and there was a lot of issues to solve and sometimes disagreements about how to get there, but, but it really was a collaborative group.

And that is somewhat unusual, you know, because we had not only the, you know, the modular housing manufacturer factory OS, but then their development arm. So really the, the building owner as well.

Like was there in the room. We're all in the room. One of my favorite moments in the project, Thomas, I, I, I think you may not have been at this meeting.

I, you know, I'm, I'm based in New York, but I was at several of the meetings and, you know, In the factory OS office in, in the Bay area. And, you know, there was some, like, there were some challenges of using this innovative material. As, as you know, you've already described Thomas, [00:31:00] like to do good, innovative work.

There are always gonna be challenges and Larry Pace, you know, who's this, uh, incredible. veteran of the construction industry, had a full career in traditional construction before deciding that construction had to be different and starting Factory OS with his co founder, knows everything about how to make buildings, knows every product out there, knows how much anything is going to cost, gets in there and is drawing the detail with us even though he's You know, the CEO, he recently passed that on, but, um, so Larry's in the meeting and someone like had the, had the, uh, courage, I think, you know, not necessarily in a good way, but the courage to say something like,

well, what

if we just don't use the mycelium on this project and Larry

Pace, like, took his big fist, slammed it

on the table and said, it.

Yeah. The

whole point

of this [00:32:00] project and all of our work is to get

this innovative material in this building in Phoenix.

You know, he basically insisted that we needed mycelium in Project Phoenix.

and to me, that was, like, that was a huge

Step

in itself to have someone who knows

everything about

construction, everything about the risks, who's going to

be taking some of the risks himself,

have be so bought in to this material innovation and influencing the construction

industry that he just

insisted on it.

And, and. At a certain point, I'm sure every innovation story has something like this, like, you need someone like

that to just say, this is the goal, we're going to make it happen,

you know, we're going to, you know, and even if there are failures along

the way, we're going to, we're going to, you know, put this down as, as the target. and so that I'm always going to remember

that, that moment. [00:33:00] I was

somewhat surprised because I knew that he's so

practical. This is, by the way, affordable

housing with a very short timeline. you know, a strict budget. and he was saying, we're going to commit to this anyway.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, that's that is interesting coming from the construction side as well, Right.

Normally as an architect We have the crazy ideas and I'm using my podcasting air quotes that get shot down or value engineered out of the project and for I mean project owner, but also builder to really double down and say, this is the whole point.

I think that's absolutely incredible. That I bet that was an amazing day and thing to witness, right? Because you're, you are coming at this often from the design side as well. And for the story to be owned by the contractor like that is, is a fantastic story.

David Benjamin-1: Yeah, absolutely. Um,

I,

Evan Troxel: I'm interested in, let's go ahead.

David Benjamin-1: well, I just wanted to

describe one other thing that I helped that [00:34:00] I

think helped us all

unlock a little bit of the potential here. And it's, it's

interesting to me. Even to generalize from this toward other kind of innovation. But, um, in this

particular project, I mean especially

because, you know, maybe some, some people

listening, um, hopefully have, have heard about mycelium,

have seen it have, know, what it's like, these kind of mycelium

composite materials and Um,

In this case,

in taking this step for scaling up, we had to do another thing that We haven't quite talked about

yet, which is combine mycelium,

a very carbon negative material, sustainable material,

biomaterial, with a small amount

of a traditional material. And I think that step

is worthwhile and important. And maybe will help us get to a point

[00:35:00] we have 100 percent carbon negative and biomaterial, sustainable biomaterial. Um, and so there, there are two ways to think

about this in

my mind. One is we have this mycelium material, which can do

incredible things. It's structural, it dampens

noise, it has

thermal insulation.

Um, Most importantly for me, it's carbon negative, meaning there's

more carbon absorbed

during the process of making it than emitted. That's because it's using the agricultural waste and all plants have absorbed carbon dioxide.

So it's got all these great possibilities, you know, uh, uh, characteristics and possibilities.

Um, but it has a

couple of challenges in being in a real

world building. And we picked one of the, um, most. Difficult applications, which is the facade for performance. Um, And a couple of

challenges are, um, the durability

and the strength. Compared

to other

[00:36:00] materials. Um, so for the strength, Thomas and his team did some incredible innovation, um, to get us where we needed to be. And for the durability, we chose, so I sometimes think of it this way, we chose to take the mycelium material, which can be kind of a block or a panel that we're going to use in a facade, and coat it with a very small amount of a synthetic material to get the durability. So, you know, you have this material, it's like, By volume, it must be like 95 percent or more. Mycelium composite material, and then a very thin coating, almost like painting something on, and that is FRP, Fiber Reinforced Polymer or Fiberglass. So that's one way of thinking about it. Another way of thinking about it is FRP is a high performance building facade material that's kind of taking off.

It's spreading through the industry. It's got all these really interesting properties, incredibly durable. Um, [00:37:00] Very lightweight. You can make huge panels out of it. They can be constructed very quickly and save you time and money. Um, and typically it would have a core material. So you have a layer of fiberglass, a layer of often foam, you know, synthetic foam, poly isofoam or EPS foam, and then another layer of fiberglass. And so another way of looking at this innovation is We're gonna substitute the core material. We're gonna take out the poly ISO or EPS and we're gonna put in this biomaterial, mycelium composite material, and we're gonna have something that has all of the advantages, existing advantages, of FRP facades, but one additional advantage, which is the the carbon footprint, the sustainability. And so that's been really important. I think the vision is we can get to a facade one day, maybe in another 10 years, but don't [00:38:00] quote me on it, where it's going to be 100 percent organic biocomposite facade. But for now, this step is really important because we can get the best of both worlds. Um, and crucially, we can still get a carbon negative facade. overall, it's got a negative carbon

footprint. And then, We have all of the advantages of

FRP, which, and it made me think of it again, because that has

helped us pass a lot of the

tests, you know, because we have

this composite, and I think it's

a totally valid step along the way to

the most radical, sustainable future we can have.

We need these steps like this which are,

you know, a step along the way. It's not all the way there yet, but. it's

an important step. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: pre, go for it, Thomas.

Thomas van Haren: Oh, I was just going to add, I think, you know, The the

the Chrysler panels, you know, obviously, um, alleviated a lot of concerns as well, [00:39:00] right? I mean, it's what we were talking about before, you know, how does it perform long term? Where is this, what does it actually look like in real life?

It kind of having the mycelium material. Being completely enclosed, right? Wrapped in a proven material kind of took all of those, uh, concerns away and you would say, okay, You know, from a performance in terms of being exposed to the elements or, or other risks that you're taking, um, it kind of pushed that risk down a lot, uh, because FRP is a proven material.

Um, and by doing it like this, almost in a step, uh, step by step basis, it made it a lot more palatable, I think, uh, for people on, on that whole project team, um,

And for us as well. So, Yeah,

Evan Troxel: Absolutely, I think that that, this is kind of the natural progression to get from one end of the pendulum to the other, right? You've got to have step change along the way, and so the gradient of, You know, what, what does, what makes sense for people to adopt it? Because [00:40:00] you have proven technologies marrying that in a composite sense with an unproven technology to, to get over those objections, I think makes a ton of sense and I, and also coming from a durability standpoint as an architect of public projects over the years, like this is the very first thing that anybody who builds a school or, you know, you've got, Affordable housing project.

I there's going to be the owner who's going to be like, you know, they don't have a huge, Windfall of a budget for building maintenance, right? I mean, we've, we've all experienced this. It's like buildings, buildings don't go through the carwash like your car does. And, and, and so they don't maintain themselves.

Right. And so when you're thinking about the durability, uh, and maintenance staff, And having to even, even from an industrialized construction standpoint of having to ship these things and things get banged up in shipping, right? Like that's normal too. And so thinking about it from the standpoint of it, this logistically has to work.

You have to [00:41:00] get it from the manufacturing facility to the site and transportation is not like, Uh, uh, Touchless process, right? So, thinking about all of those things, I mean, this totally makes sense. And, and Thomas, I'm just wondering if you can kind of paint a picture of what this product actually looks and feels like.

Because that's something we haven't really talked about. I know we had a lot of, You had a lot of great samples on display at Autodesk University that people could pick up and touch and there was different kind of texture levels and, and things like that to this product. But if you could maybe describe what we're talking about here to give the audience an idea of what it looks and feels like, that would be fantastic.

Thomas van Haren: Yeah, so, uh, I think that the composites, uh,

product when it's finally said and done, obviously, you know, we, we grow these things in molds, um, you can do it in very large molds or in

small molds, um, it's a, uh, hemp herd, so, it's basically, uh, a waste, uh, material from the fibrous industry, um, that we then mix with the

mycelium and [00:42:00] then it self assembles and eventually, uh, We'll grow it a little bit more.

It takes about five days, um, for that material to, to, to bind and and grow. Um, we take it out of the mold And let it grow for another day. and

then we dehydrate it in a, in a large scale, uh, oven or, or a dehydrator or kiln.

Um,

and the final product then feels a little bit like, um, think of it

as a a slightly heavier, more natural feeling styrofoam or EPS, right?

It's, um, it's, uh, it, it feels like it's almost, um, like an, uh, like an E wood type of, uh, material, um, that if you overgrow it properly, All right, if you have a little bit of a layer of mycelium around it should feel soft and velvety. Um, but you can also grow it very hard where if you rub your hand over it, it feels more like, um, kind of, uh, unbrushed wood almost, uh, like a, like a rough wood [00:43:00] type surface.

Um, so yeah, that's, that's really what it looks like. And then obviously with the, um, Uh, well, Dave, you could probably speak to this better, but, um, with the FRP panel around it, you know, it feels like a regular FRP panel. You just don't know what's inside, right? Inside is the mycelium material as opposed to a poly iso or an EPS.

Um, so yeah, it's, uh, that's kind of the final, the final product.

Evan Troxel: And speaking about kind of performance characteristics, can you list out what you're seeing? And maybe even go back to maybe what you thought the possibilities were and then what has transpired throughout the creation of these panels?

Thomas van Haren: Dave, you want to take that?

David Benjamin-1: Yeah,

I can get, I,

can get started with the overview, but I think Thomas, you, you obviously

have more of the fine grain of detail, but, um, you know, um, we talked before about all the players in the room trying to work together. And, um, there were a lot of really interesting [00:44:00] moments where we were listening to each other, brainstorming together, and something that really, you know, was helpful and unlocked some possibilities for me was hearing Andrew from FactoryOS, who I know, Evan, you know, we've talked to before, um, talking about how, um, a facade, the facade in the modular housing, uh, assembly process is one of those, you know, challenging things.

You can make the boxes in the factory, but you gotta put the facade on. in the field, for the most part, unless you innovate, um, you know, because you got to stitch the boxes together and the waterproofing, it's easier to do that on the whole building, not on each module, etc. So, he, he was just talking about the inefficiency of that process and the five things that he has to do in the field, to make this facades work. And he ticked them off and they've become [00:45:00] part of my, my thinking ever since. Uh, let's hope, hope I can remember them. I mean, the, the first one is structural. You gotta, you know, connect the boxes together, especially laterally. Um, then you need waterproofing, you need fire resistance. You need noise dampening and you need thermal insulation.

And often these

are separate trades going on And it takes a long time. It's back to traditional construction and it costs a lot of money because it's taking more time. Um, and we started to realize

maybe our hybrid facade with the mycelium And, the FRP could provide a better, Two of

these, or even three of these. and now we're aiming for five of

these layers of performance. So that is,

that's been my list. It starts with like,

what do they need

to do in the field to get this building completed? Those five

layers that aren't already part of those boxes. you know, but this is,

this is generalizable

to non modular construction as well. [00:46:00] Um, and we've been seeing that,

you know, kind of

remarkably, Mycelium material helps with the

fire rating and we've done those fire tests and we've We've, you know, done

them to, um, specifications. We've

passed the Class A fire

rating for buildings in California under 30 stories

as the assembly of mycelium and fiberglass.

Um, we're doing even further

tests right now for the

noise dampening, which already the material came with Thomas and Ecovative had these tests saying, yes, it's going to be good for noise dampening. We have some data about thermal performance. And the other, uh, and the structure we've, we've been working on together.

Um, the waterproofing will come just through the detailing of the assembly, but so we're able to get those five layers of performance, or we're optimistic. Some we've proven already. Some are, you know, in process and that will unlock, not only like a good facade, a high performance facade, [00:47:00] but really essentially cost, because if we can take a single 38 foot long panel, Yeah. and assemble it pretty quickly in the field without scaffolding, then we can save, you know, as many as five plus months of construction time. And that will

unlock,

you know, obviously cost savings that might make it worth it to spend a little more per square

foot on this material,

just of the, of the material itself.

But, uh, you know, and

Thomas, you've

been instrumental, you know, when we came to

you and we said,

We were already working on this and we said,

okay, let's, let's work on the fire. You were like,

here, we've got done all these tests. We have all this data. Here's the

stuff. And when we said, now let's talk about noise. You said,

yes, here's the,

you know, but for structure

and you also said we've done all this stuff, but we did some more

together,

you know, just for this project. So we've

really been, you know, working to make it work for this project, which we think will be

generalized with a lot of other projects.

Thomas van Haren: Yeah, [00:48:00] I think that's been the most surprising thing to us, at least about the project, right? It's when you came to us, it was, it is really only a replacement, uh, of the existing filler material, right? Um, it doesn't necessarily have to, uh, perform as well. And I think we knew that the material, uh, would pass fire rating.

We also knew that it had, um, some thermal insulation value, um, and some acoustic, uh, and, and good acoustic properties. Um, what we didn't know, what we've been surprised about, and that's definitely, you know, a credit to how much work we all have done on testing it and implementing it in the right way, is how that whole package performs together. Um, Not just from, from a performance, but also from a structural perspective, right? We were very, uh,

uh, concerned about, you know, is this actually going to hold up? Uh, can you actually, Um, use the mycelium and bind it in a way inside an FRP panel [00:49:00] that will then also allow you to appropriately put it on the outside of a building?

Um, and I think what all of these tests are showing, um, is that there's a path to getting that,

done and not just benefiting from, Oh, look, there's a funky, uh, you know, uh, carbon negative material inside, but actually that material performs as well and actually has an attribute to, you know, the speed of the construction, uh, and to what other materials you can strip out as a, as a result of that.

performance, right? and I think that's been the biggest learning, uh, for us. and

I think, um, shows, shows very promising.

Evan Troxel: It's very interesting to hear how you're kind of ticking all those boxes and I can see why it would be so attractive, obviously, to especially in terms of speed, but also to your point about cost, David, right? When you are replacing four or five other things with a single thing, that makes a huge difference.

And you mentioned, Weatherproofing. So it, it doesn't sound like this is acting as a rain screen. Like you have [00:50:00] to have a vapor barrier, barrier behind it. Then you said you were going to accomplish that through detailing. Maybe you could just talk a little bit more about at least the direction you're going there, because I think that's another thing that architects who are listening to this might be interested in hearing about.

Okay.

David Benjamin-1: Yeah. Um,

so that's very much, uh, in, in process

right now. Um, in the, final stage, the, the version that.

you saw,

um, Evan, that, we were presenting at Autodesk University was detailed as

a rain screen. So We went in and we said,

look how amazing

this could be with, you know, if this was an integrated

system, not a rain screen. Um, and

everyone said, yes, yes. Um, but.

And I remember, I don't know who came

up with this, but, well, I know it's a common expression, but someone said, let's walk before We run. The very first version, let's prove that We can make a

38 foot long panel, get the detailing

right?

[00:51:00] get the tolerances right, You

know, get all

the, You know, numbers for the testing, fire, acoustic,

etc.

You know, and then if that works, then we'll do an

integrated system. I believe this was kind of coming from the Factory OS side, and it made

total sense. Look, I

mean,

that's the way to get things done, right? And everyone

had their eyes on the prize. But after we

did that

full scale mock up, um, Factory OS said, You know what?

Let's go for the integrated system. Let's see what it

would take to do

that. And that's what

we're currently working on now.

The biggest challenge is, I mean, the panels themselves,

Entirely waterproof. I mean, it's the same type of

fiberglass, more or less. I mean, Yeah, it's just where two come together.

Right. But it's the same material that's used for boats. So obviously it's in itself is is

waterproof. Now, I'm sure our great partner, Bill

Kreisler and Kreisler Associates, they've got their own [00:52:00] proprietary form of FRP and you know,

it's, it's highly engineered. It's incredible. They've got a whole, you know, a career in, in super high performance, incredible FRP. So it is, you know, even more than a traditional fiberglass. Um, but. Within that unit itself, we're totally good. It all comes down to the detailing between two units. Well, and then we also learned it to my surprise from Factory House's point of view it's it wasn't that hard to get the Connection and the and the detailing between the box and the panel. It's all about panel to panel detailing. You know, so Um But, but everyone's pretty confident that that can work.

Evan Troxel: I want to ask about size and shape because again, that's just kind of complete the picture for people who are listening like I've seen it in [00:53:00] person, but But I'm interested in I assume you can you can do anything within you know A certain range right shape like how it the flutes and in the you know, because it's a mold you can kind of go crazy

David Benjamin-1: Yeah, I think that's right. And so, you know, Thomas will describe this, but, um, for, for the, you know, both, both materials, you know, the, the synthetic material and the natural material, um, are created with molds. And so they can be any, any size and, and shape. You know, but, but there's some details of that, which I don't know if they get too technical, but about how you can have a single 38 foot long FRP. Um, in theory, you can have a single 38 foot long mycelium composite, but we decided to, to do it in a more modular way this

Evan Troxel: oh, yeah, that makes sense

Nice. Thomas, Can you talk about size and shape a little bit? Because, you know, David's mentioned [00:54:00] 38 feet. Um, and if you could describe shape and, and kind of what the possibilities are, with, with aesthetics, because you're doing this in a mold, I assume that there's, there's a lot of possibility, but maybe just describe how it looks and feels a little bit more.

That's

Thomas van Haren: uh, a lot of possibilities that, that, that's correct. Um, you can really make any shape or form, uh, with the Mycerium. Now, uh, the, the, the trick is in how do you scale that, right? So how we have initially scaled the business for our packaging. Uh, uh, product, um, is that it is a mold that goes into a baker's rack and then, you know, you will grow those, um, and eventually you'll roll them into a, into an oven. The downside there is that you'll have, you'll need to have one flat surface, right? Because you're growing it in a surface, uh, or in a mold, and then you take them out, which will always have as a result that, you know, one surface is flat. Now, that, doesn't necessarily have to be a limiting factor here. [00:55:00] We have made fully round things and completely other things by having two panels grow together, right?

So after the initial stage, you can then bind them together by letting the mycelium bind the two shapes together. So there's lots of different things you can do. Um, the limiting factor obviously is how do you scale that, right? So how do you actually make sure that you have a surface or a form, uh, or a shape that's, uh, That you can actually replicate fast and at a low cost, uh, at a low cost, um, uh, from a low cost perspective. Um, What I would be really interested to see in the future, like, like David mentioned that if we can grow this material directly into a panel, right, a massive 30 foot panel where we let the mycelium grow and self assemble,

um, and then finish, uh, finish the panel off that, that would be an ideal situation from a cost perspective. Um, but yeah, in theory, There are no limitations, right? Our technology is being used [00:56:00] for things from building materials, relatively simple shapes, right? Uh, to pretty intricate packaging, uh, packaging products, all the way to, uh, human coffins, right? As you, you know, you can imagine that there's lots of different shapes and forms, uh, that they've experimented with.

And, um, yeah, that's actually been pretty, pretty successful. So yeah, there's not. Not a lot of limitations there, other than how you set up your prediction facility, and how you scale it. And I think that's the nut that needs to be cracked, um, in order to scale this up.

David Benjamin-1: And just to make one other quick connection, um, that's another area where the digital. Workflow can be very important, you know, because like you're saying, Thomas, you can basically make any size, well, any shape and then eventually any size. And, you know, you can translate really directly between 3D geometry on the computer and the shape of a mold. And you can do that both with the. Mycelium product and the FRP product. [00:57:00] So the same digital model, you know, standard offsets and things like that. So it does but I think Evan part of your point might be um, This is not only a 38 foot long panel that's carbon negative and durable and can be used today but Well, and it could be 30 foot or 40 foot whatever Um, but it's got a lot of aesthetic possibilities So it's not like it's one color and one flatness and one aesthetic. You can make almost anything with it. Um, and I think that's exciting too. To say, if it's going to scale up, it can't just be like one, one finish. It's got

to

Evan Troxel: and you're getting a,

David Benjamin-1: possibilities.

Evan Troxel: and you're getting a twofer there too, I assume, uh, from, from trying to recall what I saw and just kind of putting two and two together. Uh, I don't think I heard this explicitly, is this has to do with the, the sound attenuation that you're going for, right? Like you're, you're trying to the Project Phoenix is, is [00:58:00] near a highway or a freeway.

And so there's, I mean, noise attenuation is a huge part of it. Issue on this project. And so what we see in these outward facing panels is getting you something else as well. Right. And this is all part of that digital workflow because you need to be able to model this and test it ahead of time so that you can do some, some modeling to, to, to see how it's going to react in that actual environment before you, you do it.

And so I assume that the fluting that we see on these panels has to do with that as well.

David Benjamin-1: Yes, exactly right. And so in short, if people are imagining it's like we can make the facade thicker where it needs more noise attenuation and also in some ways more privacy because it can cause a, you know, a thicker facade with less, you know, views inside an apartment and thinner where it doesn't need that. And also the geometry itself. You know, a little bit [00:59:00] like you imagine if you're like in a recording studio, um, you know, you

have

a flat wall is the worst. Yeah.

But if you have, uh, more, you know, shape, then you can help, uh, kind of, uh, confuse the

Evan Troxel: the noise. Yeah.

David Benjamin-1: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. So cool. What are we missing here in this, in this story? So, it's fascinating, but I don't want to miss anything, right? So, is there, is there anything that we haven't covered in this? I mean, this project is yet to be built, and you've, you've put some, some verbal disclaimers out there, like talking about future and, you know, the future of where this is headed, and obviously this is a direction and there's a ladder to get there, but I'd like you were on some step on that ladder to get where this Potentially could go, but is there anything else part of Project Phoenix story or the Ecovative story and the Autodesk story of the collaboration between you two that we haven't touched on that you think still needs to be brought up?[01:00:00]

David Benjamin-1: There's one thing. Well, there's one thing that, um, Has always stuck with me and Thomas, I'm curious for your, your thoughts on this at this point. Um, so again, back, back 10 years ago, um, when I was so excited about the, the future of mycelium materials, and also trying to convince others, starting with convincing the original jury for the competition that, you know, our project was important and relevant for the industry and things like that. Um, One thing I cited, and I hope this is accurate, um, was that, um, 3M, the big materials company, the inventor of scotch tape and post its, and, and in essence we could say, like, the ultimate pinnacle of chemical based materials. I mean, and I did a project with them, I visited their facilities, and these guys are incredible at engineering with chemicals. And at [01:01:00] the time, 10 years ago, 3M had just invested in Ecovative. And I believe I heard this or someone told it to me, and so I hope it's accurate. My memory is accurate, but 3M said, you know, why are they, the ultimate chemicals company, investing in biomaterials? You know, and even back then, some people were saying bio is the future. You know, the 21st century is going to be the century of biology. Um, Even, uh, Steve Jobs is known for saying something like, We're gonna have more innovation in the bio age than we've ever had in the computer age, things like that. So that, that wave was starting. But 3M, I think, said a little more practically, We think that mycelium has the potential to be a materials platform, like plastics is a materials platform.

And my interpretation of that is, like, think of everything we can make with plastics. We can make clothing. We can [01:02:00] make rigid materials. We can make flexible materials. We can make foam like materials. Some can be transparent. Some can be opaque. You can basically do anything. Like the, the, it's a platform, right?

Like almost anything you want. You can make a bag. You can be disposable. It can be permanent. Of course, we know there are a lot of problems with plastic and even back then it was known. But, but the critical thing to me was platform. Like, and. My interpretation again was, you know, there are many species of mycelium. There, you're already proving it, Thomas, even more than 10 years ago, that you can make food out of this. You can make fabric like, leather like things out of it. You can make brick like things out of it. And more and more, you can make wood like things out of it. And, um, I think that's, I think that's really exciting.

You know, and again, returning to, you know, The thing that's always on my mind, decarbonization and [01:03:00] climate change. That is a powerful thing. If you're trying to decarbonize buildings and you have a new materials platform that is biodegradable and organic and with a negative carbon footprint, that is worth a lot of attention.

Thomas van Haren: Yeah, I couldn't have said it better, uh, David. And I think that's, that's exactly how we look at, uh, at Ecovative as a, as a platform company, um, that does, uh, that has, that will eventually have a number of verticals, um, trying to replace plastics or other materials, right? And yeah, they're just going crazy.

Tapping into what you said about plastics. You know, the difficult thing is competing actually with plastics, right? Because it's such a great material. I mean, it's a crap material, but it's a great material, right? It's odorless. It's smooth. It's, you can have, you can have any, any color, any surface, any shape.

And that's an incredibly hard thing. To reposition, you know, society's perspective and, and, um, I think, uh, [01:04:00] the even trickier thing about it is matching up society's perspective and government, government pressure on replacing plastics or, or other materials that are petroleum based. Um, and how quickly can get companies there and how do they get their bottom line there, right?

Like that is the tricky thing. And we are now seeing that, you know, obviously. For 17 years. And, um, the product, the, the composites technology that we were talking about, uh, has been around for 17 years. And the tricky thing is that, you know, you need to match up momentum with where the adapters actually are.

And I think that getting those two things to align is incredibly difficult, right? Um, whether it's from a food perspective or materials or Or, uh, or a, uh, building, uh, in construction materials perspective, getting, uh, excitement in, uh, uh, you know, the wider public's eye to align with, are there companies [01:05:00] who are willing to take the bet, pay a little bit more, and thereby, you know, drive innovation and adaptation of new products, getting those two, those three things to align at the same moment is incredibly difficult.

Um, but we're very, uh, confident in, uh, in, in our ability to get there. Um, and yeah, we think, uh, We agree with your view, David, that mycelium has, uh, a lot of, uh, of, of new products to bring, uh, to the table. And I think we're only scratching the surface, um, you know, commercial mushroom growing has not been around for that long, right?

It's only been 150 years or so, um, compared to tens of thousands of years on domesticating animals and, um, growing crops. So, you know, I think, um, that's how we eventually look at mycelium as a new crop. Uh, for the future, um, that will bring, uh, different materials, uh, to the, uh, to, to society and to the economy.

So, yeah, we're definitely [01:06:00] excited about that.

Evan Troxel: Mycelium has just been quietly waiting to be noticed, right, for so long, for so long. And the, the application potential is incredible. Uh, the, and the sweet spots that you've identified right here on this project as kind of a case study to prove it to architects and builders who are Looking for innovative ways to address the very real challenges that we're all dealing with from so many different angles and kind of ticking all of those boxes that you both have outlaid here on this episode today that they do exist, right?

And this is something worth really investigating. And I'm hoping that there will be opportunities for people in these industries to really see it in action, go to the project. and talk about it and touch it and feel it and really see how it's performing. Because I know we, we need a lot of convincing as well.

Like I said earlier, our reputations are on the line, but even more so than that, like it [01:07:00] actually has to perform. It has to be one of those things that, that really lives up to everything that we're, we're hoping it can do. So, This has been a Great. episode, a great conversation. Thank you both so much, for taking the time to share about it today.

And I look forward to that time in the future, wherever we can tour the project and see it for real. And that, that would be absolutely fantastic. It was great to see the displays and kind of the, where you were at back in November at Autodesk University. But, um, in construction terms, this is moving relatively quickly and I can't wait to see it in action.

David Benjamin-1: Great. Thank you so much, Evan. Great to talk to you, Thomas.

Thomas van Haren: Yeah, likewise, David, and thanks for having us over.