Wade and Paul - Growing house ideas...

Some “Growing Houses” Ideas:

After having a quick discussion with Paul at noon, we came up with some thoughts. I’ve thrown them here and added a few to round out some of the ideas. Please look at these... we need your feedback to enhance our presentation for Friday. 

BTW. Please keep Thursday clear!

Wade(and Paul) Dec 7, 2010.

-- The Ideas --

Communities can be started based on culturing or borrowing a polis-“seed.” Polis citizenship includes a caretaker relationship to a polis-“plant.” Once the polis has formed, the plant learns from the inhabitants and incorporates the information into its genetic makeup. The polis-plant can send out “feeler” roots or vines to sense places of useful materials, needed structural stability, sinks for output, sense competing organisms…etc. The living polis plant can share organizational information with other sites through cross-pollination or use of other chemical means

Starter homes are sapling dwellings or “new growth,” while established communities are “old growth” and are woody, more permanent. If capacity is reached in one area, the polis plant can, after pollination, spread anew to another region and start a city based on the existing configuration. If the configuration takes, a new city that is ready for inhabitants can sit, ready for use.

Once old homes are no longer of value, the plant removes nutrients to them and they are closed off (for structural use, or to let them atrophy, or to be consumed to make way for new growth).

The polis-plant provides clean water through its internal purification systems (refugium-like processes). The plant uses the inhabitant’s nitrogenous wastes for itself symbiotically.

The plant is the network:

Nutrients can be shared between polis plants based on need and availability due to local production. Processing of wastes can equally be accomplished through cooperative exchange of services between contiguous plants. Transfer of goods through exchange mechanisms within the plant(flagellate tubes) where the plant gets what it needs energy-wise to provide this function. Communication through companion and symbiotic species that feed each other may be possible.

The plant is the point:

Locally generated food, filtered water, and waste removal are some point processes. Light and heat can be generated through metabolic processes. Air can be moved and filtered through similar means (flagellum and pin-wheel organics)

The plant grows with the occupant and anticipates crisis response (.ie people growing old need a more accessible abode possibly on one level and a different nutrient stream… .etc)

Without a polis-plant, there can be no colonization so no inefficient existence. As habits become more eco-unfriendly, the plant will either adapt within limits or surround for removal(like a cancer) the offending activity thus completing the cycle.

Competing polis-plants will resolve infringement based on survival of the most capable. If the adaptations resulting from the inhabitants give it an edge, then it wins and the competing polis-plant will lose as will their city.

In the far-fetched future, the polis-plant genetic information will also include the DNA of its inhabitants. Other worlds can be colonized as the polis-plant seeds are shot into space where they will hibernate until they find an environment where they can flourish.