This building made of growing trees could change the way we think about architecture

02-09-2024

Grafted trees make up the bones of this nature pavilion.



[Photo: Terreform ONE, Mitchell Joachim]

BY NATE BERG
4 MINUTE READ

In a forest along the Hudson River north of New York City, a strange new building is slowly rising. The strangeness of the building is that it’s meant to be occupied by humans, animals, and plants. The slowness of the building is that it’s made out of—made by, really—growing trees.

Fab Tree Hab is a 1,000 square foot tent-shaped pavilion that uses grafted white willow trees to form its walls and roof. Using a computer-designed scaffolding system to precisely guide their growth, these trees are bent to create a living canopy that will, through specifically placed tree grafts and planter boxes, fill out the form and structure of the almost-entirely bio-based building. The scaffold can eventually be removed and reused elsewhere. Within 10 years, it would be a kind of multi-armed and interconnected mega tree house. It’s a prototype that could show how buildings may eventually be grown rather than built.

The project comes from Terreform One, a nonprofit art, architecture, and urban design research group led by architect Mitchell Joachim. The idea behind this project has had a tree-like maturation period, starting from seed around 2002. Habitat for Humanity had launched a design competition looking for new approaches to building suburban housing. At the time, Joachim was pursuing a PhD in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, exploring the application of ecological processes to design.

Along with fellow doctoral researchers Lara Greden and Javier Arbona, he began to explore new ways ecological processes might be applied to the design brief of getting massive amounts of housing built. “We wanted to use the powers of computing and fabrication systems and other ideas about how we could prototype this to nudge nature or help train nature to do the things it does naturally, but shape it into usable structures and eventually homes,” Joachim says.

More:
https://www.fastcompany.com/91024342/this-building-made-of-growing-trees-could-change-the-way-we-think-about-architecture