Trees, Time, Architecture: living plant construction offers new perspectives in the age of limited resources

Trees, Time, Architecture! marks an evolutionary step from shaping objects towards designing processes. The volume brings together a variety of views on the relationship between trees and architecture, urban spaces, modernism, politics, feminism, and cultural values. This collage of historical, research-based and discourse-related perspectives looks at how trees can be preserved, used, and appreciated in the Anthropocene. It highlights historic examples of growing architecture, such as the living root bridges of the Khasi people in India, the accommodation of trees in urban housing and public spaces, novel approaches to design and construction with living trees, as well as trees as resource for building material.

The essays, photographs, memoirs, film reviews, and conversations in this book are supplemented with exemplary architectures, new research perspectives, and current designs. They illustrate dynamic processes in which trees play a key role as constantly changing organisms. They invite a transdisciplinary examination of relationships between people, trees, and architecture, as well as their rethinking and further development in our time of constant change and limited resources.

• Introduces living plant construction as an important tool to improve the climate in our cities
• Brings together a variety of views on the relationships between trees and architecture, urban spaces, modernism, politics, feminism, and cultural values
• Presents approaches to living plant construction from various world regions and ages through wide range of media, such as photographs, graphic essays, documentary reports, and film reviews
• Exhibition: Trees, Time, Architecture! Design in Constant Transformation at the Architekturmuseum der TUM, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (March 13 to September 14, 2025)

Autorentext

Andjelka Badnjar Gojni is a research assistant at the Technical University of Munich's (TUM) Chair of Architectural History and Curatorial Practice and a curator at the Architekturmuseum der TUM.

Kristina Pujkilovi is a research associate at the Professorship for Green Technologies in Landscape Architecture at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Ferdinand Ludwig is Professor of Green Technologies in Landscape Architecture at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Andres Lepik is the director of the Architekturmuseum der TUM and Professor of Architectural History and Curatorial practice at Technical University of Munich (TUM).