March 5, 2026 The Story of Mimmik: The Microscopic Disruptor of the Construction Industry Half of our world is made of concrete, a material responsible for 8% of all global CO₂ emissions. Biomason, a biotechnology company born from the bold idea to change this, has found a way to grow concrete using bacteria. Inspired by the way coral reefs have been doing it for millions of years. Together with FRONT, they are now bringing this living technology to the European market. This is the story of Mimmik, and of two people who believe that planet-friendly construction can become the new normal. “Concrete is essentially three things: sand, aggregate, which usually is stone or gravel, and a cementitious binder that holds them together. But to make cement, the industry needs enormous heat, and that releases huge amounts of CO₂,” explains Camilo Restrepo, CEO of Biomason. “Biomason’s founder and architect, Ginger Dosier, saw how much cement was being used in the construction industry and began to wonder whether natural alternatives existed. She asked a simple question: “How does nature grow cement, and can we mimic this process?” The answer she found in coral reefs. Corals synthesise a cementitious material called calcium carbonate to build their sturdy skeletons out of. Biomason harnesses the same process, known as Microbial Induced Carbonate Precipitation. In this process, bacteria act as microscopic production plants, taking a source of carbon and calcium and crystallising them into calcium carbonate. These crystals then bind the aggregates into a material with the compressive strength of conventional concrete, no heat required. “In fact, the CO₂ in the raw materials is not released but transformed: captured into the crystalline structure of the calcium carbonate, locked and immobilised. The result is a building material with 60% fewer emissions than traditional cement products. And it reaches full strength in approximately 40 hours, compared to the 28 days that conventional concrete needs to cure,” says Restrepo. “This is the technology that makes a concrete alternative industrially feasible” Restrepo spent 19 years inside the traditional cement and pre-cast industry before joining Biomason two years ago. “Even when I was working with regular cement, my focus was always on sustainability and innovation,” he says. “I kept looking for ways to improve the product, to make it more sustainable. When I came across Biomason, I thought, ‘This is it.’ This is the technology that makes a concrete alternative industrially feasible. But to convince the rest I needed to prove that it was as trustworthy as the original.” Disrupting a conservative industry with innovative biotech Thus began the journey from the laboratory petri dish to an industrial product at scale. “Trying to move our invention into production was not easy; we were met with a lot of resistance. The cement industry has spent decades optimising its factories to do one thing very efficiently, so it doesn’t welcome new ingredients or new processes with open arms,” the Biomason frontman explains. But around 2019, Biomason got a surprising offer. “IBF, a visionary Danish pre-cast manufacturer, reached out because they were looking for alternatives to cement. They could see where regulation and investor pressure were heading and wanted to be ahead of it,” Restrepo says. “They were willing to open up their facility for us and take the risk. Together, we built the first-of-its-kind bio-concrete tile manufacturing facility in the world. A place where biotechnology and industrial pre-cast manufacturing meet for the first time. It is true innovation, not just in the product but in the entire production process.” The facility currently produces 8,000 square metres of tiles per year, with plans to scale to 20,000. The tiles are distributed across Europe by FRONT, the Amsterdam-based platform for sustainable building materials led by Ward Massa and Thomas Zeegers. “Sustainable construction has to become the obvious choice.” The connection between the two companies was made years earlier, when Massa got in touch with founder Dosier after she had won a prize for her groundbreaking idea. He reached out, but the technology was still premature, and an actual product was still a distant dream. In 2020, Massa tried again, and this time, Biomason was on the verge of opening its first small-scale production facility in Denmark. The timing was right. FRONT had spent years building a network of forward-thinking architects and developers eager for materials exactly like this. “They have the technology; we have the route to market,” Massa says. “And we both had the same objective: making sustainable construction the obvious choice, not the niche exception.” An innovative tile that is a conscious and strong commercial choice The tile Biomason and FRONT created is called Mimmik, named for what it does: mimicking nature’s own process of binding aggregates. The first projects in England, the Netherlands, and Denmark are currently proving the tiles in real environments, building the performance data to convince conservative buyers. “When one of our first projects with Mimmik in London was completed, I asked if people noticed anything about the floor tiles, and they said nothing stood out to them”, Restrepo says. “It might surprise you, but that was the answer I was looking for. I don’t want anyone to realise the difference. Mimmik should perform exactly like any other high-quality tile, and it does.” But the story behind it, of course, is anything but ordinary. According to Massa, that is the key to getting developers to embrace new, clean technologies. “Walking on these seemingly normal tiles, knowing it's a solid foundation of innovation. That's when you feel the joy.” “The sustainability credentials of a building are no longer just a conscious choice; they are a commercial one. Forward-thinking developers use materials like Mimmik to tell a story to their investors and to the people who will work or live in the buildings they create,” he says. “An anonymous tile becomes a strong story the moment you know what it’s made of. And a strong story, on top of the environmental performance, adds real value.” For Restrepo, it’s the feeling that binds it all together. “Walking on these seemingly normal tiles, knowing it’s a solid foundation of innovation. All the work is beneath your feet. That’s when you feel the joy.” Colouring the world one tile at a time But there is something else about Mimmik that Massa and Restrepo return to with undisguised excitement. The binder, which Biomason calls Zymecrete™ technology, is not grey like regular cement. It is crystalline. Cities are predominantly grey because the cement used in concrete is grey. “If you want to colour it, you have to add pigment to it. But Zymecrete is clear, so our tiles take on the colour of the aggregates we use”, Restrepo explains. “You can see the sand, the gravel, the stone. Zymecrete allows the aggregates to be the protagonists of the tile.” “Concrete no longer has to be grey; you can see the colours and textures of the earth in it. We're bringing nature back to the cities.” In the long run, infrastructure built with this technology could reflect the geology of the place where it was made: the local stone and the colour of the earth, visible again underfoot. “Right now, city streets are monotone because of one material choice made a hundred years ago. What if we changed that default?”, Massa asks. “We can bring nature back into our cities. Create a reconnection between a place and its natural materials.” That change can start today. “Mimmik is now available for commercial use, and the technology is ready to scale,” says Massa. “We expect huge interest from the innovators in the sector. And for every architect, developer, or builder who has ever wondered whether there is a better way to build, Mimmik is the proof. Planet-friendly construction shouldn’t be the alternative. It should be the norm.”
“Concrete is essentially three things: sand, aggregate, which usually is stone or gravel, and a cementitious binder that holds them together. But to make cement, the industry needs enormous heat, and that releases huge amounts of CO₂,” explains Camilo Restrepo, CEO of Biomason. “Biomason’s founder and architect, Ginger Dosier, saw how much cement was being used in the construction industry and began to wonder whether natural alternatives existed. She asked a simple question: “How does nature grow cement, and can we mimic this process?” The answer she found in coral reefs. Corals synthesise a cementitious material called calcium carbonate to build their sturdy skeletons out of. Biomason harnesses the same process, known as Microbial Induced Carbonate Precipitation. In this process, bacteria act as microscopic production plants, taking a source of carbon and calcium and crystallising them into calcium carbonate. These crystals then bind the aggregates into a material with the compressive strength of conventional concrete, no heat required. “In fact, the CO₂ in the raw materials is not released but transformed: captured into the crystalline structure of the calcium carbonate, locked and immobilised. The result is a building material with 60% fewer emissions than traditional cement products. And it reaches full strength in approximately 40 hours, compared to the 28 days that conventional concrete needs to cure,” says Restrepo. “This is the technology that makes a concrete alternative industrially feasible” Restrepo spent 19 years inside the traditional cement and pre-cast industry before joining Biomason two years ago. “Even when I was working with regular cement, my focus was always on sustainability and innovation,” he says. “I kept looking for ways to improve the product, to make it more sustainable. When I came across Biomason, I thought, ‘This is it.’ This is the technology that makes a concrete alternative industrially feasible. But to convince the rest I needed to prove that it was as trustworthy as the original.” Disrupting a conservative industry with innovative biotech Thus began the journey from the laboratory petri dish to an industrial product at scale. “Trying to move our invention into production was not easy; we were met with a lot of resistance. The cement industry has spent decades optimising its factories to do one thing very efficiently, so it doesn’t welcome new ingredients or new processes with open arms,” the Biomason frontman explains. But around 2019, Biomason got a surprising offer. “IBF, a visionary Danish pre-cast manufacturer, reached out because they were looking for alternatives to cement. They could see where regulation and investor pressure were heading and wanted to be ahead of it,” Restrepo says. “They were willing to open up their facility for us and take the risk. Together, we built the first-of-its-kind bio-concrete tile manufacturing facility in the world. A place where biotechnology and industrial pre-cast manufacturing meet for the first time. It is true innovation, not just in the product but in the entire production process.” The facility currently produces 8,000 square metres of tiles per year, with plans to scale to 20,000. The tiles are distributed across Europe by FRONT, the Amsterdam-based platform for sustainable building materials led by Ward Massa and Thomas Zeegers. “Sustainable construction has to become the obvious choice.” The connection between the two companies was made years earlier, when Massa got in touch with founder Dosier after she had won a prize for her groundbreaking idea. He reached out, but the technology was still premature, and an actual product was still a distant dream. In 2020, Massa tried again, and this time, Biomason was on the verge of opening its first small-scale production facility in Denmark. The timing was right. FRONT had spent years building a network of forward-thinking architects and developers eager for materials exactly like this. “They have the technology; we have the route to market,” Massa says. “And we both had the same objective: making sustainable construction the obvious choice, not the niche exception.” An innovative tile that is a conscious and strong commercial choice The tile Biomason and FRONT created is called Mimmik, named for what it does: mimicking nature’s own process of binding aggregates. The first projects in England, the Netherlands, and Denmark are currently proving the tiles in real environments, building the performance data to convince conservative buyers. “When one of our first projects with Mimmik in London was completed, I asked if people noticed anything about the floor tiles, and they said nothing stood out to them”, Restrepo says. “It might surprise you, but that was the answer I was looking for. I don’t want anyone to realise the difference. Mimmik should perform exactly like any other high-quality tile, and it does.” But the story behind it, of course, is anything but ordinary. According to Massa, that is the key to getting developers to embrace new, clean technologies. “Walking on these seemingly normal tiles, knowing it's a solid foundation of innovation. That's when you feel the joy.” “The sustainability credentials of a building are no longer just a conscious choice; they are a commercial one. Forward-thinking developers use materials like Mimmik to tell a story to their investors and to the people who will work or live in the buildings they create,” he says. “An anonymous tile becomes a strong story the moment you know what it’s made of. And a strong story, on top of the environmental performance, adds real value.” For Restrepo, it’s the feeling that binds it all together. “Walking on these seemingly normal tiles, knowing it’s a solid foundation of innovation. All the work is beneath your feet. That’s when you feel the joy.” Colouring the world one tile at a time But there is something else about Mimmik that Massa and Restrepo return to with undisguised excitement. The binder, which Biomason calls Zymecrete™ technology, is not grey like regular cement. It is crystalline. Cities are predominantly grey because the cement used in concrete is grey. “If you want to colour it, you have to add pigment to it. But Zymecrete is clear, so our tiles take on the colour of the aggregates we use”, Restrepo explains. “You can see the sand, the gravel, the stone. Zymecrete allows the aggregates to be the protagonists of the tile.” “Concrete no longer has to be grey; you can see the colours and textures of the earth in it. We're bringing nature back to the cities.” In the long run, infrastructure built with this technology could reflect the geology of the place where it was made: the local stone and the colour of the earth, visible again underfoot. “Right now, city streets are monotone because of one material choice made a hundred years ago. What if we changed that default?”, Massa asks. “We can bring nature back into our cities. Create a reconnection between a place and its natural materials.” That change can start today. “Mimmik is now available for commercial use, and the technology is ready to scale,” says Massa. “We expect huge interest from the innovators in the sector. And for every architect, developer, or builder who has ever wondered whether there is a better way to build, Mimmik is the proof. Planet-friendly construction shouldn’t be the alternative. It should be the norm.”
