Grow your own home

What if you'd plant a tree, and you'd end up with a house? Well, that is exactly what the people at Archinode (part of the Human Ecology Design group at MIT) have been contemplating upon. It is, of course, a very romantic idea: a completely eco-friendly building, that is taking into account it's entire impact on the environment. The result of this research has been the Fab Tree Hab (Living Tree House), for which four basic principles have been applied:

1) Use zero pesticides
2) Harvest rainwater
3) Sequester carbon
4) Eliminate material waste

Well, in their design they did just that, and a little bit more: the consequences of true green design has been taken into account. Mitchell Joachim was one of the developers at MIT, and he's now taking the concept further with the non-profit design collaborative Terreform. The idea is to allow plants to grow over a computer-designed plywood structure. Once the plants are interconnected and stable, the plywood is removed and reused. Well, of course it's a very utopian idea, but maybe someday in the future...