Amazing designs built with living trees

Here’s an idea for environmentally friendly, carbon-absorbing architecture and design: structures and sculptures built with living trees.

A concept sometimes called arborsculpture, the idea is based on bending and sometimes grafting together young trees to form useful shapes and structures such as stools, tables, benches and even houses. One of the earliest known practitioners of the craft was an American named John Krubsack, who harvested his grown chair in 1914.  In some cultures, the idea goes even further, by centuries, back.

Today, a number of people and companies are promoting arborsculpture as a green way to create functional, carbon-sequestering items and homes. Among the designs created with living trees:

Tree stool

Briton Christopher Cattle calls his designs “grown furniture” and says, “Growing furniture isn’t going to save the planet, but it can show that it’s possible to create genuinely useful things without adding to the pollution that industry inevitably seems to produce.”

Tree hut

“Arbosculptor” Richard Reames not only creates a variety of  items using living trees, but has written two books on the subject, including Arborsculpture: Solutions for a Small Planet. Among the living structures he highlights on his Website, Arborsmith Studios, is a grown gazebo located in a park on Okinawa. …

Amazing designs built with living trees

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