Wednesday 23 September 2009

An old book that describes living buildings

A nearly 50 year old book that describes a galaxy wide market in houses grown from seed. The term Genetically Engineered didn't exist when Jack Vance wrote this book but that could be the only modern interpretation of the methods the Iszic of the planet Iszm, use to create their harvestable houses.

The book implies that immense financial  rewards await the person that can corner the market in these cheap ready-grown habitations......

Sunday 13 September 2009

Techniques - Bracing

Bracing can be used to support a damaged tree during its recovery to full strength but more interestingly, for this blog anyway, it can be used to modify the form of even quite substantial branches.

http://www.tree-consult.org/images/pdf/eng/BracingISA.pdf is a full description of modern approaches to this technique.

Bending has a good chance of success up to a 60 degree angle.