“build buildings like trees and cities like forests”
Ah, the dance of the cherry trees. Few things in nature are as lovely as the pink clouds of cherry blossoms. A wonderful way to welcome Spring.
The loveliness is perhaps even more lovely since it is so fleeting. And the display in our garden now consists of a carpet of blossoms on the ground. There are still a couple of blossoms in the tree but maybe tomorrow when we wake up it could all be gone.
Some paper that we made, filled with blossoms.
Yet, the cherry blossoms are not only beautiful and provide inspiration for art, they can also teach us about ways to live.
Can we build cities that imitates not only the beauty blossoms but also the way the trees interact with its environment? A cherry blossom estate that lives in harmony with other living things.
The cherry tree may be used as a metahor for eco-effective principles. The thousands of pretty flowers create fruits loved by birds, humans and other animals. A seed may fall to the ground and take root and grow into a big cherry tree. The pink shower of blossoms that cover the ground, they decompose and turn into nutrients. The decomposed blossoms nourish microorganisms, insects, plants, animals, and soil.
Admiring blossoms may help us to rethinking designs and building eco-effcient builing that saves energy.
A cherry blossom estate would invite the light in, the sun would dance among the houses. At night the cherry blossom houses would clean the air from toxins so that everybody would wake up to the sounds of birds and fresh air. All the rubbish is used to nourish the Cherry Blossom Estate.
Organic architecture can use living trees to create inhabitable structures. The Cherry Blossom Estate is a playful approach that inspires young children to play with underlying assumptions about the way we build houses. The idea behind our houses is that the branches from the cherry tree are used as structural support and the houses are growing and changing when the trees are growing.
Pleaching is used in some modern designs by architects. The controlled growth and alteration of trees is used to create designs.
Photo: Egg House
Biomimicry for Young Children 