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Live Architecture — Grow Your Own Home
Ostracus writes to share a new take on the word "treehouse." Engineers and plant scientists from Tel Aviv have taken the application of tree shaping to the next level, designing everything from streetlamps to houses. "A home built from trees, the researchers said, would be a natural storm protector. 'After earthquakes and after tsunamis the only structures that still survive are trees,' said Yaniv Naftaly, director of operations at Plantware, a company founded in 2002. Naftaly told LiveScience the same sturdiness should apply to tree-made homes. Eshel and TAU colleague Yoav Waisel are working with Plantware to commercialize the leafy designs. The team found that certain tree species grown aeroponically (in air instead of soil and water) have roots that don't harden. Once the malleable, so-called soft roots grow long enough in the lab, they are molded around metal frames in the shape of a playground or park bench."
Gives a whole new meaning to "Got Root"!
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) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
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Jack Vance : "The Houses of Iszm" and "Slaves of the Klau". Both feature grown houses.
That rendering of the tree-house could have been a screenshot from any of the Myst games.
The image used in that article looks to be the same that was used in a similar article about houses made from shaped trees in Popular Science a few years back. It really is a neat concept as wood is a fairly good insulator. As long as you have a good water supply, good soil, and a community that is liberal enough to allow such structures, it looks like a good alternative to houses made from chemically treated wood.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
I didn't have long pointy ears or hairy feet. The only trees that will be used for MY house are ones that are cut down and milled into high-grade timbers.
Leave the tree and hill homes to the Elves and Hobbits.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
what about forest fires?
Trees don't grow on... Well, yes they do, but Rome wasn't built in one day either.
Would be nice, but it's too slow for any of us now living to use it.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
It's cool looking and all, but once you figure in things like termites and natural rot I don't know if this is a very good idea.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Trees grow. The non-living components of whatever is being built around (or within) them do not.
One would expect huge maintenance difficulties in order to maintain structural integrity or even general usability of anything that's built around the trees.
What happens when you take the inherently strong natural shape of a tree, and modify it to suite the shape a human needs to be useful? Is there still a benefit over say, concrete block? Or does the unnatural shape so foreign to the strengths of the plant, that the benefits are mitigated?
FTA: "Tolkien's hobbits would feel right at home in new dwellings made out of living tree roots and designed to protect inhabitants from earthquakes."
Wut? I'm no expert in Tolkein, but don't hobbits live underground?
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Unless they have created some industrial strength Miracle Grow, this is going to remain in the realm of park benches, custom picnic tables and cheesy 3D graphics programs.
So it'll take a long time. Didn't stop Konstantin Kirsch from planting tree domes several years back. The oldest video on that page dates to 2001, and it'll be years yet before the walls he's woven out of separate trees grow together enough to form a solid surface. But it's entirely feasible. All it takes is a green thumb and lots of patience.
Mind you, it'd be cool if we had some way to accelerate the process, but that'd be tough.
No longer would we have to call Dutch Elm Disease a disease, we can just call it "Urban Renewal".
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Finally, my dreams of living like an elf in the aerial city between huge trees is coming closer to the reality. Next item on the agenda; immortality (i know people are working on that as well).
"After earthquakes and after tsunamis the only structures that still survive are trees,"
Surely that's because of their shape and the leeway they have - being simply bendy poles. Once you shape them into buildings, you drastically increase their drag and reduce the leeway they have. It's not the fact that they are natural that makes them survive tsunami and earthquakes, it's their shape, so when you change their shape, you get rid of those beneficial properties.
This just seems like one of those "it must be great because it's natural" snake oil salesmen.
... may take a while to grow, though.
Quote: "which might take a few years in tropical climates and several decades in more temperate locations".
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I bet it makes for pretty boring horror movies.
I think you could build a house as strong as a tree can be, if you wanted to pay for it. Instead of a concrete slab covering the ground with a few straps holding the house to the slab, you could have a deeply rooted system in the ground and it would be pretty sturdy. Skyscrapers do this.
This is my sig.
Finally- the last comment.
Hmm-- let's see- trees remain after storms... so that's great!
-- so lets change trees, so they aren't treelike, but houselike
but still trees! so they will stay! perfect!
what a bunch of f**knuts
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
...that still survive are trees" might be true. But usually not the case after hurricane.
Also, if the tree get sick or infected, it might be very hard to treat. Just days before in Hong Kong, a heavily infected tree fell down, one pedestrian was killed.
http://www.livescience.com/environment/080828-living-architecture.html
This page shows several interesting trees including a number that were custom-shaped.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So...what happens when the trees die?
And the next thing you know, you'll be growing your own lawn chairs or sprouting trees in your parking space.
Actually, both of those projects can be done in a shorter time frame, but are probably better for the beginning of spring, rather than the end of summer. (Although the latter will be done again 9/19/08 in San Francsico).
*with apologies to websites in case of slashdotting.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
The MIT project the CGI image used in the article comes from - http://www.archinode.com/bienal.html
And the company talked about in the article, Plantware - http://www.plantware.org/
MilkMiruku
Not necessarily. Trees only grow by, well,growing new layers, outwards. That's why you can count the rings and all that. The old wood doesn't change shape or anything. (Though it might rot.) A lot of it in the centre is even dead already.
It's basically like living in a brick house where periodically you add a new layer of bricks to the outside walls. It eventually gets to be on hell of a bunker, but the rooms haven't changed at all.
If you prevent the inner surface from rotting, the rooms in the tree wouldn't grow too. Your walls would just get a little thicker each year.
Or I guess you could periodically shave a thin layer of wood from the inside, keeping the walls at a constant thickness, but having your rooms grow together with the tree. Frankly it isn't an unsolvable problem even then. Just put anything which needs pipes (kitchen sink, bathroom, etc) or wires (AC sockets, TV cable, etc) in the centre, so they don't need to be moved when you enlarge the rooms by 1mm.
But even that is probably over-thinking it, since it assumes an actual house in a tree. All these guys have done, is mould some soft roots into park benches and the like. And their houses, from what I understand, would basically be a layer of roots bent around some panels done out of something else.
Frankly, it's not that huge a progress. We've already known how to bend wood in any imaginable shape. See the curved Roman shield (scutum) for an example that's over 2000 years old.
I don't see many fundamental advantages in doing the same thing out of roots, as opposed to bending planks of wood. Especially since we're talking soft roots, as opposed to wooden ones. It's, almost by definition, a softer and less resistent material than wood.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Imagine if they truly took this to the next level and played around with the DNA of trees. Finding the ones responsible for shapes, etc... That could actually be even more amazing in its application.
when you've moved on to making chairdogs
So , slowly your house will get smaller , unless you cut it regulary.
Congratulation, Sir !
You thus just invented the new craft of "Macro-Bonzais" !
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so where does the Zergs come into the picture? nymphs? dryads?
Paul Laffoley ...has been talking about doing something along these lines, only at a more complex level of focus.
I have have an Ewok fur coat. And I belong to the animal welfare group, People Eating Tasty Animals. We believe in the welfare of humans. :P
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It's the root system and soil that makes trees stand against hurricanes. Remove the soil and give trees a unique shape, and they probably won't stand. I hope they don't grow 10,000 homes just to learn this in 10 years.
When I saw Tel Aviv I instantly thought Morrowind. But wait, don't those guys already live in tree houses? Hell, Tel Aviv is a giant mushroom house.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
Elves would probably be more comfortable in this Human habitat than Hobbits.
Wut happened to good old hurricane-proof mayan designs?
The reason trees survive tsunamis is because they are extremely dense, having a very low volume. Once you shape it into a house, it will no longer survive such severe forces.
But earthquakes? Living in CA, I can tell you first hand that you stay the hell away from trees during an earthquake. No matter how strong the tree may be, it's exerting a lot of angular force on the soil, and any weakening of the soil will result in the tree uprooting, and falling... it'll remain intact, but it'll still fall.
And how about all the other natural forces? Houses that can withstand fires are able to do so because none of their wooden frame is exposed... It's covered with tile, stucco, drywall, etc, etc. Things that wouldn't be doable with a living tree.
How about lightning? My neighbor has a wonderful tree that has been hit by lightning 4 times in as many years... Each time a major limb is blown to bits, and comes crashing to the ground. I certainly would prefer my house not explode...
And floods or mudslides? Hurricanes and tornadoes? etc.
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but you passed away 50 years ago. Damn.
JUT construction. Just Un Timed.
they already hate the trees outside my brick apartment walls.
therefore useless
wake me up when we can grow trees with internal living spaces for humans, a-la quest books from 20 odd years ago
...been there, done that!
(Ok, maybe not whole dwellings. But he's known for putting the concept into practice.)
Anyhow, here's the wiki article on him.
So we can grow our own tree houses and become ninjas just like Naruto, Believe it!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
In Larry Niven's novel "A Gift from Earth," citizens of the colony Plateau grow houses with coral around a giant balloon.
These things: http://static.monolithic.com/
when built properly, are supposed to stand up to earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes.
Some of the designs are pretty neat, I think
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