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"Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen."
- Larry Niven

Architectural Coral  
  A structure grown to a specific shape using small coral-like organisms.  

It was a great sprawling bungalow, laid out in a rough cross, with the bulging walls typical of architectural coral. No attempt had been made to disguise its origin. Matt had never before seen a house which was not painted, but he had to admire the effect. The remnants of the shaping balloon, which gave all architectural coral buildings their telltale bulge, had been carefully scraped away. The exposed walls had been polished to a shining pink sheen. Even after sunset the house glowed softly...

Architectural coral was another gift of the ramrobots. A genetic manipulation of ordinary sea coral, it was the cheapest building material known. The only real cost was in the plastic balloon that guided the growth of the coral and enclosed the coral's special air-borne food.

Technovelgy from A Gift From Earth, by Larry Niven.
Published by Del Rey in 1968
Additional resources -

Compare to the house trees from The Houses of Iszm (1954) by Jack Vance.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from A Gift From Earth
  More Ideas and Technology by Larry Niven
  Tech news articles related to A Gift From Earth
  Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven

Architectural Coral-related news articles:
  - Concrete Canvas - Inflatable Concrete Buildings
  - Mycotectural Buildings Made Of Fungus
  - Binishells Graceful Housing
  - City Made Of Bone
  - Engineered Living Building Materials
  - Your Martian Dream Home, Made By Fungi
  - With Mycotecture, We'll Just Grow The Space Habitats We Need

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