Thinking about joining the living structure to other things

The strength and coherence of any structure is a result of the attachment of different materials and elements by appropriate methods.

In constructing a living building, there are several areas where attachment is not the same as in any other building. These are:

• The trunks/stems entering the soil
• The joining of trunks together - the same method is variously called "pleaching", "approach grafting" and "pressure grafting".
• The support of a waterproof surface over the whole (i.e. roof!)
• The integration of fixed size components into the living structure - e.g windows, steel shape enforcement
• The use of supports to either temporarily or permanently take some of the load to the ground through the living structure.

I'll put up a post for each one.

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.