Plant Organismal Development Based Building Design and Perpetuated Construction
By Avery Tucker
This idea seeks to establish a novel conceptual framework to building design and construction that is based on plant organismal development. Firstly lets compare the idea of design as it applies to architecture and plant development. Once conceived, building designs are largely static as they do not necessarily allow building growth and expansion over time. Plants by comparison have in their genetic "plans" the ability to develop over time, undergoing primary and secondary growth which allow for cellular expansion in the soil matrix and in the atmosphere. In theory, it should be possible to also design buildings in such a way that per some unit time they can be expanded upon and added to as sufficient resources are acquired. Rather than having a single period of time where construction occurs, construction could instead be perpetuated and spread out over the entire life of a building. While this particular idea focuses on several facets of plant development and growth, there are many more subcellular processes that could be mimicked and utilized to expand on these ideas. An initial design of this fashion might focus on radial building development in a single plane, adding additional growth planes in future designs.