High Living

Artist Unknown

I am planning to build the tree house I never had as a child this weekend. Now that I’m all grown up, I’m hoping it will look something like this:

Building tree houses is clearly no longer just child’s play. This modern tree house was designed by Torquil McIntosh and Simon Mitchell for the young at heart and eco-minded adult instead. The house sits on stilts above the trees, thus leaving the habitat below untouched. It also collects rain water as a source of running water and solar energy to power the home.

While the tree house built by McIntosh and Mitchell is designed so as to minimize any disruption to the natural environment, another set of designers instead believe that our homes should be integrated into the environment.

The design of the home is so integrated with the environment in fact, that it is almost an entirely edible source of nutrients for both the humans that live within in it, and the other organisms that surround it. Known as the Fab Tree Hab, it is designed by the architects Mitchell Joachim and Javier Arbona, and the environmental engineer Lara Greden. The home is grown over 5 years from weaving trees over plywood as scaffolding such that they form a structure. When the plants are well interconnected and secure, the plywood is removed to be reused, and the shell of the house is covered with mud and plaster. The designers are still experimenting with plastic windows made from soy that will expand as the houses continues to grow.

Here is a video tour of the tree house:

The Fab Tree Hab is a radical approach in incorporating symbosis between humans and their environment into ecological design and architecture, without being at the expense of our modern technological advancements. More info on the Fab Tree Hab can be found on Terreform.

If tree house living is the way to go for a sustainable future, home designers are going to need to provide us with some variety in tree house models. Here is a selection of other incredible tree houses around the world:

Designed by Michael Garnier

One of the world’s largest tree houses is at Alnwick Castle. At 6’000 sq feet, it can fit 300 people, is wheelchair accessible, and oh, it cost $7 million to build. (FYI: Anlwick Castle is also where the Harry Potter movies are filmed).

This one is my personal favorite:

Designer Unknown

Further Readings:

Wowza!