Could This Be What the World’s First Truly Green City Looks Like?

Sure you’ve heard of green architecture, but what about a building made entirely from plants? A new proposal by Dutch experiential designer and architectural manager Raimond de Hullu (MSc), called OAS1S, promises that in the near future we might all be living in our very own garden homes. The project, which aspires to be the first 100 percent truly green building, offers up a vision of structures that are long and thin like trees with rooms stacked for maximum space (Think if government housing projects were modeled on Ferngully). The buildings would each be wrapped in foliage, and live “amongst a woodland within a city”—essentially a tree-based community within a larger metropolis.

According to PSFK : “The construction is C2C, which stands for cradle-to-cradle. This entails an approach where there’s a holistic economic, industrial and social framework that seeks to create systems that are not only efficient but also essentially waste-free.”

The company plans on using zero-waste materials including recycled wood, organic HQ insulation, “green walls,” and a window process called triple-glazing to ensure ultimate sustainability. OAS1S will also use solar panels and boilers, water and air pumps and storage, and something called “grey water and filtration systems” to ensure that the houses will be entirely self-sufficient. The company’s mission is also to provide affordable green alternatives for everyday citizens. Since solar panels currently cost an average of $10,000 to install, the company has come up with a way to offset these expenses by forming a Community Land Trust that splits land and house ownership costs—meaning local citizens won’t be bearing the brunt financially.

Currently the OAS1S project is still in the conceptualization phase, but if they can create even one development it will have a dramatic impact on how we imagine “green-ing” our future cities. And the best part of all: real life tree communities just might be around the bend.

For a full intro to the project, read below: