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Mitchell Joachim spent a decade working with architect Michael Sorkin, followed by a short spell with Frank Gehry. He now teaches at Columbia University and is a partner at Terreform 1, a nonprofit focused on ecological design.

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This is a living structure single-family home with an encompassing ecology.  Tree trunks from the load-bearing structure to which a weave of pleached branch ‘studs’ support a thermal clay and straw-based infill.  The Fab Tree Hab plan accommodates three bedrooms (one on the second level), a bathroom, and an open living, dining and kitchen area placed on the southern façade in accordance with passive solar principles.  Design details pertaining to structure, elemental flows, renewal, raising the home, and budget are explored in the following paragraphs

Structure, form, and growth

A methodology new to buildings yet ancient to gardening is introduced in this design - pleaching.  Pleaching is a method of weaving together tree branches to form living archways, lattices, or screens.  The trunks of inosculate, or self-grafting, trees, such as Elm, Live Oak, and Dogwood, are the load-bearing structure, and the branches form a continuous lattice frame for the walls and roof.  Weaved along the exterior is a dense protective layer of vines, interspersed with soil pockets and growing plants.  On the interior, a clay and straw composite insulates and blocks moisture, and a final layer of smooth clay is applied like a plaster to dually provide comfort and aesthetics.  Existing homes built with cob (a clay and straw composite) demonstrate the feasibility, longevity, and livability of the material as a construction material.  In essence, the tree trunks of this design provide the structure for an extruded earth ecosystem, whose growth is embraced over time.   Living examples of pleached structures include the Red Alder bench by Richard Reames and the ‘Sycamore Tower’ by Axel Erlandson.

Life sustaining flows

Water, integral to the survival of the structure itself, is the pulmonary system of the home, circulating from the roof-top collector, through human consumption, and ultimately exiting via transpiration.  A gray water stream irrigates the gardens, and a filtration stream enters a Living Machine, where it is purified by bacteria, fish, and plants who eat the organic wastes.  Cleaned water enters the pond, where it may infiltrate the soil or evaporate to the atmosphere.  Water consumed by the vegetation eventually returns to the water cycle through transpiration, simultaneously cooling the home. 

Fundamental to the flux of the water cycle is solar radiation, which also drives heating and ventilation.  In the winter, sunlight shines through the large south-facing windows, heating the open floor-space and thermal mass.  The reverse is true in the summer, as the crown of the structure shades itself from extreme temperatures, instead using the sun’s energy for photosynthesis.  Two levels of operable windows set up a buoyancy-driven ventilative flow, drawing in cool air at floor level.  An active solar hot water system heats the home through an array of radiant floor pipes.  Technology inspired by nature also explicitly engages it to provide water and warmth to the habitat.  The Hull section illustrates design for water flows: a roof-top trough harvests water for human use; the plumbing system is positioned to provide for gravity-induced flow and gray-water reuse; a composting system treats human waste and will later return nutrients to the eco-system.

Renewal

In congruence with ecology as the guiding principal, the home is designed to be nearly entirely edible so as to provide food to some organism at each stage of its life.  While inhabited, the home’s gardens and exterior walls produce food for people and animals.  The seasonal cycles help the tree structure provide for itself through composting of fallen leaves in autumn.  The envisioned bioplastic windows, which would flex with the home as it grows, would also degrade and return to the earth upon life’s end, as would the walls.  Seedlings started in such a nutrient rich bed may provide the affordable building blocks for a new home typology, firmly rooted to place.  Likewise, realization of living structures would introduce forest renewal to an urban setting.  Building of these homes occurs throughout a longer time period, yet the benefits are enjoyed as long as the trees live, after which another wave of renewal begins.  Exterior of the home embraces growth in its gardens and with bioplastic windows that are envisioned to accept change in physical size over the home’s lifetime.

Rethinking budget

In departing from the modern sense of home construction, compilation of a budget for this prototype inherently opens the debate surrounding decision-making and green architecture.  It is widely acknowledged that life-cycle costing methods would provide more favor to conscientious home designs by including energy cost savings and, more abstractly, accounting for reduction or elimination of externality costs.  However, this falls short of recognizing the compound and continuous value of sustainable housing as an interweave of systems, and it still places too much value on benefits received today as opposed to tomorrow or hundred years from now. By rejecting the tendency towards immediacy and, likewise, first cost dependency, a true representation of sustainable value can be achieved by explicitly recognizing the adaptive, renewal, cooperative, evolutionary, and longevity characteristics of the home.  This design explores the concepts in that debate by including all five traits.

At the first stage of maturity, when the habitat is readied for human presence, cost outlays are similar in nature to traditional construction, yet much less in magnitude based on their local, natural, and edible qualities.  Clay, gravel, and straw can be obtained locally for certainly no more than the cost of concrete.  Plants and vegetation, many of which can be started from seedlings when the structure is originally planted, will come at a nominal cost.  Installation of heating, lighting, plumbing, electrical, and communication systems will be no more than that for a typical home, and should be less due to the systems integrated design of natural ventilation, gravity water flow, daylighting and passive solar.   As illustrated by this comparative assessment, realization of a living home certainly fits within the realm of affordability.

Extra, or non-traditional, operating costs and required expertise over the life-time of the home include pest management (insects that may threaten the structure) and maintenance of a Living Machine water treatment system.  Technical demonstration and innovation is still needed for certain components, primarily the bioplastic windows that accept growth of the structure and the management of flows across the wall section to assure that the interior mains dry and critter-free.  All in all, the elapsed time to reach livability is greater than the traditional sense, but so should be the health and longevity of the home and family. 

Experiment in time

Above all, the raising of this home can be achieved at a minimal price, requiring only some time to complete its structure.  Realization of these homes will begin as an experiment, and it is envisioned that thereafter, the concept of renewal will take on a new architectural form - one of interdependency between nature and people.