Grow Your Own Skyscraper By Philip Bethge 07/22/2009 Link to full article below
Three young German architects are designing structures made completely out of living trees, including a pavilion for concerts in downtown Stuttgart. But designing the ultimate treehouse turns out to be trickier than one might expect.
Ferdinand Ludwig grows trees on trees. That's what he does. And he has grafted together -- trunk to top, top to trunk -- seven young willow trees.
At the moment a scaffold supports the young architect's unusual tree tower. The roots of individual trees protrude sideways and into containers of soil. But soon the roots will be cut off. And "at that point," the young architect says, "the trees will finally have merged into a single organism."
Ludwig calls this technique "plant addition." To do it, he uses one-year-old willows that are thin and flexible but at least 10 meters (33 feet) long. Once the willows have matured to full strength, the strands will be able to support the eight-meter (26-foot) tower that Ludwig plans to begin building near Lake Constance in southern Germany at the end of July, as though they were steel beams.
To read the full article: http://www.spiegel.de/
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