Plantings for the future The Fab Tree Hab Three MIT designers – Mitchell Joachim, Lara Gr

Plantings for the future The Fab Tree Hab Three MIT designers – Mitchell Joachim, Lara Greden and Javier Arbona – created a concept of a living tree house which nourishes its inhabitants and merges within its environment. The project of Fab Tree Hab is expect to take a minimum of five years to grow the home. The plans are for the interior to be lined with clay and plastered to keep the weather outside and to look normal. The exterior is to be all-natural.The Patient Gardener A Swedish architectural firm VisionDivision took part in a week-long workshop at the Italian university Politecnico di Milano with the students. The result was an 80-year plan of a living cheery tree dome in an hourglass shape and grown furniture. Framing for the dome, table and a lawn chair were built. Ten Japanese cherry trees were planted in a diameter of eight-meter circle. Four of these trees are to be living staircases to a future top level. The stair trees will have their branches grafted into each other to form the rungs. VisionDivision’s architects helped the students and instructors to create an easy maintenance plan for future gardeners of the university.Baubotanik Tower Ferdinand Ludwig designed this tower as part of his doctoral thesis with the help of Prof. Dr. Speck. “Speck become the botanical co-supervisor” said Ferdinand. Growing at the University of Stuttgart is a three-storey tower of living white willows (Salix alba). This nine-meter-tall construction is almost fully grown, with a base area of around eight square meters.The framing is made up of mainly steel scaffolding which is supporting the growing trees, while keeping them to the correct form. They started with 400 white willow (Salix alba) grown in baskets on multiple levels with one row of willows planted into the ground. Once the trees were two meters tall, they were planted at the different levels of the tower. These plants are then trained to the design.The root system of the bottom level of willows needs to develop large enough to support the willows on the above levels, so that the scaffold becomes obsolete and then it and the watering and fertilising baskets can be removed altogether.The trees are grafted together with the objective of all the different plants eventually becoming a single organism. The overall aim is to have a living structure with the strength to support itself and to carry a working load. Ferdinand predicts the tower will be stable enough to support itself in five to ten years. Ferdinand does state “However, these are only estimates.” Alternative names The practice of shaping living trees has several names. Practitioners may have their own name for their techniques, so a standard name for the various practices has not emerged.[57] Richard Reames calls the practice “arborsculpture”;[62][81][82] Dan Ladd calls his work “tree sculpture”;[48] Nirandr Boonnetr’s work is called “living furniture”;[53] Christopher Cattle calls his works “grown up furniture” and “grown stools”;[65] while Peter Cook and Becky Northey call their work “Pooktre”.[77][83] The following names are also encountered: Arbortecture[62][81] Biotecture/Biotechture[10][84][85] Grown furniture[9][10][57] Living Art[21][41][86] Pleaching[3][25][87] Tree training[25][32][88] Read more about the craft: Tree shaping (wikipedia) Tree Whispering - I’m going to get my green witch on! :D /|\ ☽✪☾ The Dance at Alder Cove - Youth/Father/Geezer  -  I see you // // -- source link

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