Trees as an alternative to brick

Living in a house on top of a tree may stop being just child’s play thanks to the work of a team of scientists from Tel Aviv University, in Israel.

“It is simply a matter of applying a well-known botanical phenomenon: the formation ofaerial roots“, says Professor Amram Eshel, one of the forgers of the new concept ofeco-architecture. Instead of using branches to create structures, the new technique takes advantage of themalleability of tree rootsand shapes them to transform them into different furniture and urban objects designed “to measure”.

Pioneering research by Eshel and his team at Tel Aviv University’s Sarah Racine Root Research Laboratory is being exploited commercially by the company.Plantware. Among the pilot projects currently being carried out by the United States, Australia and Israel aretotally natural playgrounds made exclusively with trees, bus stops, seats and suggestive green streetlights.

In order togrow our own tree houseWe will have to wait a little longer. Plantware engineer Gordon Glazer is working on a prototype. And he assures that, although building a home in this way will be quite slow, it will be worth the wait, since the result is “durable and totally ecological”.