Architects Plan to Grow House from Plants

Three architects are promoting a form of housing combining new and old technologies. They propose to grow a house from trees and vines in a botanical technique called pleaching while guiding the process computationally. Dubbed the Fab Green Hab, and created by architects Mitchell Joachim, Ph.D., Javier Arbona, and Lara Greden, Ph.D., the house would take several years to grow. It would rely on weaving inosculate trees—those that graft to each other—into a weathertight structure and finishing it on the inside with plaster, creating a fairly conventional, if non-rectilinear, interior. A prototype, the Matscape, mixing plant panels with more conventional materials, is planned for Los Angeles. More information is at www.archinode.com.