This wild building grown from trees could be the future of architecture

Terreform ONE’s Fab Tree Hab is a winner of Fast Company’s 2024 Innovation by Design Awards.

Amid the trees and shrubs in a patch of forest near New York City, there is a building that, like the forest around it, is growing. Clusters of living trees are the structural pillars of this tent-shaped building, which is gradually expanding around a wooden scaffold that’s guiding the tree trunks’ growth. Over the course of a decade or so, this canopy of trees will form walls and a roof just as stable as a building that’s, well, built.