Art? Architecture? Building technique? Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com points at the ultimate in green housing – Baubotanik architecture:
image © ludwig.schönle
From designboomWhen we first wrote about German architect Ferdinand Ludwig, I noted that Architecture is not a profession for those with short attention spans. Ludwig is in a whole different category- he grows buildings, and needs a very long attention span. His biggest, the ‘platanen-kubus’ won’t be finished until 2028.
Designboom describes it:
The building is a multi-story structure comprising of more than 1000 plane trees that Ludwig has combined into a single living organism. The living building materials overgrow a steel framework and as the years go on, will transcend into the bearing elements.
Hope the inhabitants don’t have allergies to trees. This doesn’t seem to be an Art project, although the whimsical aspect I immediately assumed would indicate so. From the Baubotanik website, here’s a Research statement:
In currently ongoing promotions in the field of research of Baubotanik, botanical, constructional and theoretical aspects of the approach building with living plants are being worked on. All in all, the interdisciplinary supervised projects aim to acquire natural scientific and technical basics as well as to describe the consequences of the approach for the design process and to classify in a culture theoretical way.
There’s at least one Ph.D. thesis involved in the work:
Goal of the PhD intentions was to develop an important botanical basis and to make it applicable for designs in the Baubotanik. This origins in the idea of putting together a multiplicity of single young plants to create baubotanical structures. These grow together to an artificial formed collective organism (plant addition). The assignment was composed of three parts dealing with botanical, technical and conceptual questions.
The motivation (besides, of course, getting to work on something cool)?
The research initiative in the context of the program KLIMOPASS (Climate Change and Exemplary Adaptation in Baden Württemberg) was developed with funding from the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Energy Management in Baden Württemberg.
It aims to develop specific design proposals and realization strategies for the practical implementation of the potentials of Baubotanik regarding urban climate. Baubotanik offers, especially through the technique of plant addition, the possibility to connect the fast disposability of building greenery with the durability, long-term robustness and sustainable ecological effect of trees. Thereby the intensive greening of cities required within climate adaptation strategies can be met at high densities.
