The first generation of Soylent is a powdered food substitute for all your nutritional needs, the second will be a premixed beverage boasting the addition of algae, but the ultimate target is fully-grown, ultra-efficient food equivalent. An eco-friendly paradigm shift, this would allow vast amounts of healthy calories to be created in very small spaces, a single small factory space supplying enough for to sustain the entire city of Los Angeles.

In just a few years, Soylent went from an experimental substance to the household name in food replacement, but its creator’s endgame is far more ambitious than the current niche product might suggest. Soylent 1.0 remains relatively cost-intensive to produce and expensive to consume – it provides simplicity, but only for those who can afford it. Soylent 2.0 will begin targeting broader markets and introduce algae-grown components, but a future version (3.0, perhaps) could truly revolutionize food production and distribution.

Imagine using just water, sunlight, air and a single algae superorganism to generate the complex nutrients (including carbohydrates, proteins and lipids) needed to sustain life, with applications in rich and poor countries (or in space). Then consider having this substance available on tap, piped right into your home like water or power. Alternatively, you might buy your own household bioreactor, churning out Soylent 3.0 directly in your kitchen on demand. Rob Rhinehart’s vision takes various forms, but it comes down to the same thing: an alternative to conventional food and potential solution to unsustainable agricultural practices, available to all those who wish to take part.

Not everyone will want to subsist partially (let alone entirely) on Soylent, now or ever, but that is also not the point – it can always be used in conjunction with other meals by those so inclined or deployed to places otherwise without sufficient food for subsistence. Meanwhile, for the next round (from Motherboard), “The algae [called AlgaWise] in Soylent 2.0 is grown by the biotech company Solazyme, in a facility owned by the Archer Daniels Midland, the food processing giant. The oil is then pressed out much like olive oil. It’s amazingly efficient. Entire tanks can be filled in days.” Solazyme calls the stuff AlgaWise.”

More from Rhinehart on current and next steps: “In the interest of building a sustainable business to fund our research we’ve been focused primarily on product improvements and new products, like the launch today, but I’ve also worked on setting up infrastructure including lab building and recruiting and drawn up a roadmap for reaching the goal of cell synthesis, starting with protein. This process has two modules: one strain engineering to develop and optimize the organism that produces, the other bioreactor engineering to make an ideal growth environment for the strain(s).”

‘Built’ may not be the right word for this compelling hybrid of architectural and arborsculptural design (or: arbortecture), featuring a complete chapel with landscaped fences and carefully cultivated gardens on all sides, the primary structure at its heart made from five species of tree.

Begun by Barry Cox on his New Zealand property just four years ago, the project originated as a private retreat but as word spread he decided to open it up to guest events as well starting this fall – the structure seats 100 people.

Leptospernum (Copper Sheen) grows up to create the walls while Alnus Imperialis (Cut Leaf Alder) completes the roof, forming a complete canopy above. amelia Black Tie, Acer Globosum, and Thuja Pyramidalis were also employed in the construction process.

Within the main building, a slim steel frame underlies the living components, serving as latticework around which the supporting trunks and branches were able to grow.

On the grounds around the central structure are a number of other intriguing and interactive elements, including a labyrinth and extensive additional gardens for walking and exploring. The entire site is carefully sculpted and maintained, featuring traditional as well as more novel landscapes.

Taking arborsculpture to new levels of efficiency and functionality, this furniture designer creates plastic molds in which his designs are grown without needing to be sawed and shaped after the fact, reducing waste and streamlining the production process. Light, soil and air are the equivalent of filament in this organic 3D printing analog, and even more directly: the molds can be 3D-printed as well.

While requiring careful planning and additional work upfront, taking young willow, oak, ash and sycamore trees and turning them as they grow into chairs, tables and lamps both shortens the construction cycle and eliminates the need to reconnect disparate pieces.

Founder of Full Grown in Derbyshire, England, Gavin Munro aims to challenge “the way we create products as well as how we see the items with which we surround ourselves, the Grown Furniture has an immediate tactile, visceral and organic appeal.”

Gavin thinks of this process as a kind of “organic 3D printing that uses air, soil and sunshine as its source materials. After it’s grown into the shape we want, we continue to care for and nurture the tree, while it thickens and matures, before harvesting it in the Winter and then letting it season and dry. It’s then a matter of planing and finishing to show off the wood and grain inside.”

The notion of shaping trees as they grow on a massive scale is not a novel one – similar techniques have long been employed in vineyards to maximize growth and optimize grape picking. Even the idea of growing fully-formed furniture is not new – artists and designers have long shaped living trees to create objects of use. As far back as Ancient Greece, chairs were ‘built’ by digging out chair-shaped holes and allowing them to fill with root structures before being ‘harvested’ from the ground.

Still, the scale and ambitions here are, however, much bigger – creating full crops of grown furniture, turning a one-off idea into a potentially mass-produced (but always unique) product line.

Each furniture piece takes a few years to grow and maintaining this ‘forest of furniture’ is nothing if not challenging: “I’m only making 50 or so pieces per year but for every 100 trees you grow there are a 1,000 branches you need to care for, and 10,000 shoots you have to prune at the right time.”

Still, the results are worth the effort in the mind of this maker: “They’re still growing now, but when harvested and finished we expect them to be not just fully functional and ergonomic but grown, grafted and fastened into one solid piece, [meaning] no joints that only ever loosen over time. These could last for centuries. We hope and trust that this will eventually become an improvement on current methods.”