Green | March 11, 2009 | 16 comments

Grow your own treehouse

source: http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/11/20/video-grow-a-living-treehouse-with-terreform/

Image
leahl
Ok...so I might be able to give up my fantasies about living in a dome house or an earthship if I can live in this...

As part of the ecological architecture nonprofit Terreform, Mitchell Joachim, Lara Greden, and Javier Arbona designed this living treehouse in which the dwelling itself merges with its environment and nourishes its inhabitants. Fab Tree Hab dissolves our conventional concept of home and establishes a new symbiosis between the house and its surrounding ecosystem.

In order to build the arboreal frame, the designers utilize “pleaching” - a gardening technique in which tree branches are woven together to form living archways. Trees such as Elm, Live Oak, and Dogwood bear the heavier loads, while vines, branches, and plants form a lattice for the walls and roof of the house. The interior structure is made of cob (clay and straw), a tried-and-true green building approach that lends itself to customized shaping of walls and ceilings.
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16 comments // Grow your own treehouse

  • kjoknoswazzup
  • ClipsFC
  • sunshinedaisy
  • nursediesel
    • 0
      nursediesel  

    • Reminds me of N.E. native american wigwams, with a jetson's twist. You could grow your vegetables on your house. Maybe even a laplander feeling.
      I like the photo with the water under the building. Waste water?
      You could also use earth to form around it.... limitless possibilities if you could get passed the 'code' people.
      It took us 1 yr to go through all the hoops, offices, paperwork,(Each one saying this is the last thing you have to do) and fee/money collectors to get a building permit to fix a roof that was threatening to colapse.

    • 3 years ago
  • taripie
  • kaps145
    • 0
      kaps145  

    • Shit yeah! That will be my retirement home, better start building/growing now. Also does it come with a monkey butler!!!???

    • 3 years ago
  • Alex_French
  • Stevox
  • unimatrix0
  • ilikeike
  • HellaDelicious
    • 0
      HellaDelicious  
    • ilikeike:

      too true, you'd have to learn to get along, or to establish an understanding. I have heard of old grannies in Burma who could do this with ants. When she goes to work in the garden she leaves her lunch in the shade of a tree and asks the ants to leave her lunch alone, if they do, she will give them some food. It always worked. But I don't know if I could do it with coachroaches---ugggg

    • 3 years ago
  • edwardNguyen
  • ampersand
    • 0
      ampersand  

    • Well, nice pictures and all, but you'd have to be awfully patient to wait on a fig tree growing around a frame to build you a house.
      Also, all the cob buildings I'm familiar with really are hobbit-sized, because it's just so ridiculously damn laborious to construct a building that way; all it's enthusiasts run out of stream very early on.
      Not to dis all traditional methods though, some are perfectly appropriate in the right place and, in many cases, preferable to some of the current toxic methods of habitat construction.
      Dream on. Build on.

    • 3 years ago
  • lucidstone
    • 0
      lucidstone  

    • I love the hobbit door! It could be less bubblelicious though.

      If we could actually grow insulated/weatherproof structures like this that weren't infested with bugs, it could be very cool and could save a lot of money and resources.

    • 3 years ago
  • ejasun
  • SW2
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