Those tall sky scrapers across the cities of the world which form its skyline are a common sight and are referred to as the part of an urban jungle that surrounds us. That is not quite to my taste. It is not just the buildings but also the term of ‘Urban Jungles’. I would much rather prefer calling them just ‘Concrete Jungles’ as I really want those who hear it understand the lack of greenery in it and how that green tinge is missing from it. But then, to each his own. Plantware, a company that is dreaming green and clean, wishes to change the conventional meaning conveyed by the word ‘Urban Jungle’ and wants to give a whole new meaning to it.
Plantware plans to make everything that surrounds us with custom grafted trees that offer us more than the concrete structures in terms of both utility and health. They wish to craft parks, joy rides and even bus stops out of trees and give the cities of the world a new shape and a new way to move forward. Plantware’s approach in is known as tree shaping, arborsculpture, living art or pooktre. One famous pioneer in this area is Axel Erlandson from California who started shaping trees in 1925, and by the late 1940’s opened up “The Tree Circus,” a tourist attraction which has now been transplanted to an amusement park in Gilroy, California.
The company has a fantasy about building houses from living trees, inspired by the ficus tree, whose roots create amazing forms. They apparently discovered a way to control the direction in which a tree grows, which can be used to grow structures that will be useful and environmentally-friendly. After consulting a root specialist and about $250,000 in investment Plantware is building prototypes in Australia, the US and Israel, where the company is headquartered. Some 10 employees form the company (since 2001); they are specialists’ biotechnology, art and industrial design. The company has really huge dreams and one wonders if this is really a grand and bold idea. One hopes that we would soon be riding and taking shelter in these new structures of Urban Jungle.
