Structure
Living grown structures have a number of structural mechanical advantages over those constructed of lumber and are more resistant to decay. While there are some decay organisms that can rot live wood from the outside, and though living trees can carry decayed and decaying heartwood inside them; in general, living trees decay from the inside out and dead wood decays from the outside in. Living wood tissue, particularly sapwood, wields a very potent defense against decay from either direction, known as compartmentalization. This protection applies to living trees only and varies among species.
Growing structures is not as easy as it would seem. Quick growing willows have been used to grow building structures, they provide support or protection. A young group of German architects are in the process of such a structure and they are continually monitored and checked. Once the trees are of age to be able to take on load-bearing weight they are tested for stability and strength by a structural engineer. Once this is approved the supporting framework is removed. Projects are limited to the trees' weight loading ability and growth. This is being studied and the load capacity will be proved by testing on prototypes.
Read more about this topic: Tree Shaping
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.”
—Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986)
“I’m a Sunday School teacher, and I’ve always known that the structure of law is founded on the Christian ethic that you shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself—a very high and perfect standard. We all know the fallibility of man, and the contentions in society, as described by Reinhold Niebuhr and many others, don’t permit us to achieve perfection.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)