A (scientifically enhanced) tree grows in Brooklyn

Not since I was a kid, reading about the adventures of Alice in Wonderland have I been so intrigued by the fanciful ideas set forth by what I can only term "eco-innovators" in nearby Brooklyn, New York! These savvy scientists have actually devised ways to integrate houses into trees (rather than cutting them down to build abodes!) and create "edible" furniture! Imagine, Alice: a chair made out of mushrooms!

I know, the idea sounds like some kind of acid-induced delusion of Leary-esque proportions, what happens when New Age collides with science fiction, but the Harvard-educated creator of this innovation is far from a baseless dreamer. Harvard graduate, MIT PhD, and now NYU professor Mitchell Joachim is working on these environmental innovations at his "green manufacturing center" at the old Navy shipyard in Brooklyn.

"I think we are in a bit of a crisis when it comes to the climate," Joachim recently told Fox 5 news. "The way we make buildings today has to change.

Here, an excerpt from the Fox 5 interview, explaining one of his ideas: a living tree house:

"We don't chop the tree down. We move into the tree and we surround ourselves with woody plants and vines that help control the local geometry of a home."
Blending biology and architecture, scientists are genetically modifying wood to grow it in the shape of a house that allows people to live on the inside and animals to live on the outside.
"There is no distinction between your home and the landscape," Joachim says. "You can have entire villages grown in this process."

Another example of biology and architecture merging is a chair that's made of mushrooms. You could even eat it.
"When you are done with our chair you throw it into a garden and feed thousands of other organisms and life forms, and contribute to the Earth's ecosystem... that web of life as opposed to a chair from IKEA you chuck in a landfill and it's done," Joachim says.

And he has the support of city and state leaders, who've invested millions in tax dollars in the manufacturing center, all to make innovative ideas grow...where else? In Brooklyn.