Yesterday, Praew showed me this fascinating video on YouTube:

This architect uses living trees to grow the support structure for buildings over the course of several years. The crazy part is that the trees are alive for the lifetime of the building, so he needs to imagine how the building will evolve as the trees mature over decades.

This is inspiring me to want to run some experiments with the “takob” trees that grow like weeds around the land and produce sweet berries that I eat with my breakfast. They seem to be growing to 5 or 6 meters tall in just 2-3 years and end up with a trunk that is about 15cm (6″) diameter in that time. They also have a beautiful canopy that we string up hammocks under. It might be interesting to try the experiment of transplanting a few saplings that we would otherwise have needed to pull out and replant them in a support formation. As the branches grow and intertwined, we could then try screwing the branches together as they show in the above video so that the trees can be “welded together” into a single structurally stronger living organism. It is almost creepy to think about it this way, but on the other hand, the idea of having an outdoor pavilion whose structure is living is the ultimate “green building” and is almost like something out of Tolkien.