DESIGN: The World's First Living Buildings by International Living Future Institute

This video about “living buildings” reminds me of the lower income apartment building called Hunderwasser Haus that I visited in Vienna. Designed by Austrian artist Hunderwasser, it features sloping floors, undulating walls, and “tree tenants”—trees planted inside the building that grow out through windows and walls.  It was the artist’s intent to design the building in harmony with nature.

The International Living Future Institute is taking a significantly more scientific approach to creating buildings integrated with nature. For their Living Buildings work, they have won the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Institute’s annual “The Buckminster Fuller Challenge,” which awards one winner $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a strategy that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.

Says International Living Future Institute board member Dennis J. Wilde, “Much of the change that we now need to navigate is a process of changing our framing stories. One of the most important and one of the powerful ways of changing our framing stories is through demonstrations. Showing people what’s possible and that’s exactly what you’re engaged in with the Living Buildings work.”