A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a tree house for grownups — a proper home constructed almost entirely from living trees and plants.

The "Fab Tree Hab" uses an ancient gardening technique called pleaching — where live tree branches are woven together to form lattice structures — to literally grow a building from the ground up. ...

While such biotecture may seem far-fetched, the team says the tools to build a tree house already exist.
—Tim McKeough, "The New Climate Almanac: Grow your own home," The Globe and Mail, February 17, 2007

Bob, an ecological engineer and designer of the house's innards, calls his creation a "bioshelter," a term coined in the '60s by the New Alchemy Institute, the sustainable-living research group of its day. The idea behind it was to emulate a living organism, "where energy efficiency is synonymous with survival." ...

As the house plan evolved, what emerged was a design that showcased both the Crosbys' areas of expertise: Lou Anne's as an interior designer who likes simplicity, openness and curved walls, and Bob's work with the concept of biological architecture, or "biotecture."
—Debra McKinney, "Bioshelter for sale," Anchorage Daily News, October 15, 2006

My research of the last twenty-five years shows that living, productive plant habitat is possible. Self-growing, energy-harvesting, air-delivered biotectonic plant shelter is possible if you want it. Do you really want to waste your life in some air-conditioned high-rise? Instead you can become a low-rise gardener-biotect (house farmer). Very economical vegetal houses (biotecture), plant villages, and plant cities (Biovilles) have been developed for single and multi-story growth.
—Rudolph Doernach, "Biotecture," Whole Earth Review, September 22, 1989