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 A Brooklyn designer has revealed a radical new eco house design - made entirely from living plants.

The 'living home' has tree trunks as its main support, with branches grown to become walls.

Weaved along the exterior is a dense protective layer of vines, interspersed with soil pockets and growing plants. 

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The current plan has three bedrooms (one on the second level), a bathroom, and an open living, dining and kitchen area placed on the southern side to warm it up.

'The living home is designed to be nearly entirely edible so as to provide food to some organism at each stage of its life cycle,' its designer, NYU professor Mitchell Joachim, said.

'While inhabited, the home's gardens and exterior walls continually produce nutrients for people and animals. 

The home is 'grown' using specially developed scaffolds. 

Once the right shape, plants are grafted or woven together.

After the plants are grafted or pleached together, the scaffolding is removed to be reused for another dwelling.

To waterproof and insulate the house, woven along the exterior is a dense protective layer of vines, interspersed with soil pockets and growing plants.

On the interior, a clay and straw composite insulates and blocks moisture, and a final layer of smooth clay is applied like a plaster to provide comfort and make it look like a normal home. 

Scaffolds can grow several houses, simply being removed once the plants are the right shape.

The current plan has three bedrooms (one on the second level), a bathroom, and an open living, dining and kitchen area placed on the southern side to warm it up.

'Instead of incorporating materials that may impart less impact to the environment and human health - impacts which may remain uncertain in extent - the Fab Tree Hab design seeks to protect and embrace the ecosystem as a source of sustainability in the built environment,' its maker says.

Scaffold sections can be readily shipped and assembled to fit local tree and woody plant species.

Prefabricated templates cut from 3D computer files control the early vegetative development.

The living tree house that can grow itself

Several designs for the home have already been developed.

Vegetation is then channeled into a specific geometry using the CNC scaffolds and grafted into shape.  

The trunks of trees such as Elm, Live Oak, and Dogwood, are the load-bearing structure, and the branches form a continuous lattice frame for the walls and roof.

Weaved along the exterior is a dense protective layer of vines, interspersed with soil pockets and growing plants. 

Scaffolds, cut from 3D computer files control the plant growth in the early stages. 

On the interior, a clay and straw composite insulates and blocks moisture, and a final layer of smooth clay is applied like a plaster to dually provide comfort and aesthetics. 

Existing homes built with cob (a clay and straw composite) demonstrate the feasibility, longevity, and livability of the material as a construction material. 

Tree trunks from the load-bearing structure to which a weave of pleached branch 'studs' support a thermal clay and straw-based infill.

Water, integral to the survival of the structure itself, is the pulmonary system of the home, circulating from the roof-top collector, through human consumption, and ultimately exiting via transpiration. 

A gray water stream irrigates the gardens, and a filtration stream enters a Living Machine, where it is purified by bacteria, fish, and plants who eat the organic wastes. 

Cleaned water enters the pond, where it may infiltrate the soil or evaporate to the atmosphere. 

The bioplastic windows, which would flex with the home as it grows, would also degrade and return to the earth upon life's end, as would the walls. 

In the winter, sunlight shines through the large south-facing windows, heating the open floor-space and thermal mass.The reverse is true in the summer, as the crown of the structure shades itself from extreme temperatures, instead using the sun's energy for photosynthesis.