Trees, Time, Architecture! Design in Constant Transformation

Argues that the use of living trees in contemporary architecture can help cities adapt to climate change. Trees, Time, Architecture! introduces living plant construction as an important tool to improve the climate in our cities. In the form of a magazine, 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 creative perspectives looks at how living trees can be preserved, used, and appreciated in the Anthropocene by taking into account their temporal dimension. It highlights ancient examples of living plant architecture, such as the root bridges of the Khasi people in India, Nordic mythology with its representation of a tree as a cosmological symbol, and the architectural use of living trees in the Roman Empire.

The essays, photographs, memoirs, film reviews, and conversations in this book are supplemented with exemplary architectures, new research approaches, and current design methods. 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.

Accompanies the Trees, Time, Architecture! Design in Constant Transformation exhibition at the Architekturmuseum der TUM, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich 13 March 13 to 14 September 2025