Cutting trees to erect houses gets you in bad books of ecologists. And shaping trees to rise in to a eco-den seems to be an eco-fantasy! Professors Yoav Waisel and Amram Eshel from Tel Aviv University are hell-bent on making this eco-fantasy come true. Since the concept of shaping living trees into useful objects known as tree shaping isn’t novel, the duo have focused on the same to roll out eco-architecture worldwide. Won’t be very long (about a decade) before we see, if not entire homes then at least a prototype, constructed with the eco-friendly technology. Prof. Eshel states that it’s just a new application of the well-known botanical phenomenon of aerial root development. Instead of using plant branches, this patented approach takes malleable roots and shapes them into useful objects for indoors and out. Pilot projects now underway in the United States, Australia and Israel include park benches for hospitals, playground structures, streetlamps and gates. I suppose the architectural institutes need to implement this as a subject, too, as the foundation of future buildings seem to be based on such eco-technologies. Via: ScienceDaily/Aftau
