Taking "Green Construction" to a New Level

People have turned to trees for home building materials since prehistory. Usually the trees are cut to harvest the timber used for construction. Architect, Mitchell Joachim is designing a home that will use living trees as its framework - a home that will grow into its environment and can be adapted to its dwellers' needs. This is not to be a house built in a tree like a typical children's treehouse. Joachim's design will train the branches of living trees and woody vines to form the structure of the house. Directing plant growth into structural forms is not a new idea, pleaching has long been used to create garden arches and fences. This project will take that horticultural art to a new level.

Named the Fab Tree Hab, the project aims to develop environmentally sustainable living homes. Water would be collected on the roof and filtered through the house, watering gardens and cooling the structure on its way to fishponds on the grounds. The sun’s rays entering through large flexible soy-based plastic windows would provide heat.

This type of environmental housing may be available one day in the future, but it won't be any time soon. Growing such a structure would take considerable time, perhaps decades.

Links:

• Houses Woven Out of Trees Proposed from Discovery Channel


• Fab Tree Hab Joachim's living house design


• MATscape another design incorporating living materials


• Growing Home by P.J.Wilkin


• Arborsmith Studios the website of Arborsmith Studios run by Richard Reames, author of How to Grow a Chair. The site features articles and links to various forms of "living sculpture."

Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 11:19 AM on March 1, 2006