Slashdot Mirror
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."
Is that you Moya?
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
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
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So, if you are tired of how your house looks like or need to fix a broken pipe at your eco-bathroom, will you wait for 10 years to accomplish this structure change?
Using pieces of (dead) wood to build something it's ok, but using the entire (living) tree is just insane.
I can imagine the news: Skyscraper made of Sequoia falls and kills hundreds due termite colony.
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
Oh, you might be able to do something that was standardized (? standardized trees), but you're likely going to get into some big problems 1) moving the things and 2) replanting them. Remember, one of the benefits touted is the ability to withstand major environmental insults such as water and earthquakes. The reason that trees (sometimes) do this is because of their extensive root systems. Said root systems are the product of many years of treeness.
If you grown a structure, then dig it up, then put it back the root system is going to be fairly fragile for some relatively (in terms of the classical building trades) long time. It just doesn't strike me as very practical for very much. Perhaps some edge conditions or smaller things. You would need to combine this with some genetic engineering for really fast growth in order for this technology to be generally useful.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"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.
...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.