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1. Wilkinson Residence
Architect, artist, magician, Robert Harvey Oshatz is all of that and so much more. He is the organic architect responsible for this magnificent home up in the canopy; the coolest house in the trees that you will likely ever see. The unique Wilkinson Residence graces the wooded landscape outside of Portland, Oregon. This treehouse would turn even the Swiss Family Robinson green with envy. More than likely you too will have a more than a twinge of desire to live in it.
We're no strangers to Germany's tree house makers extraordinaire Baumraum, so when we saw another brilliant arboreal home design from them, we knew we had to share it with you! The house resides at World of Living , a showspace/amusement park for sustainable housing company WeberHaus and greets visitors with its curvy body perched atop super skinny spider-like "legs". The unusual shape and clean lines are Baumraum's signature, and there are a lot of other cool features, so check them all out in our slide show.
Japanese professor of architecture Terunobu Fujimori built his boyhood dream in his father's garden in 2004. It's a teahouse on stilt.
The Naha Harbor Diner in Okinawa, Japan, lies at the very top of a huge Gajumaru tree about 20 feet above the ground. Sadly, that is not a real Gajumaru tree, it's actually concrete. Customers actually have to get in an elevator inside the trunk to reach the restaurant.
The Yellow Tree House by Pacific Environment Architects is built around a redwood tree, which is over 40m high and has a 1.7m diameter at its base, located north of Auckland, New Zealand. The structure is made of plantation poplar slats and used extensive natural lighting throughout. The tree house restaurant was built as a marketing promotion for New Zealand Yellow Pages.
The concept of building a tree house on a redwood tree was quite challenging and required a range of consultants to get resources and building consent, and to get construction underway in the limited time of four months. The design is an organic oval form wrapped around the trunk and structurally tied up top and bottom, with a circular arrangement, split apart on the axis with a raised floor portion. The timber binding forms basis of the main structure. Glue-laminated plantation poplar pine has been used for the slats. It is around 10m wide and over 12m high with seating 10m off the ground. The kitchen and toilets are on the ground. It has the capacity to occupy 18 people with all the comforts such as bar, structural soundness, and unobstructed views into the valley.
This treehouse by Japanese builder Kobayahsi Takashi was constructed with the express purpose of communicating with outer space. “A sparkling beacon among treetops, it is easy to imagine the dome succeeding at its mission to make contact with alien life,” writes Nelson.
The Island Wood "Bogwon" treehouse in Washington is supported by a single tree. Engineer Jake Jacob and his team from the TreeHouse Workshop fixed the house to the trunk with a series of limb-hugging rings. "Our trees are actually perched, as opposed to nailed in," he told us. "The tree might move in the wind and we don't want to inhibit the tree to be able to move in the wind."
Horace Burgess's tree house may be as close to heaven as a body can get in Cumberland County. It rises 97 feet into the sky, the support provided by a live, 80-foot-tall white oak 12 feet in diameter at its base. Six other trees brace the tower-like fortress, but Burgess says its foundation is in God. Most of his materials are recycled pieces of lumber from garages, storage sheds and barns. The tree house has 10 floors, averaging nine to 11 feet in height by Burgess's reckoning. He has never measured its size but estimates it to be about 8,000 to 10,000 square feet. He did count the nails that he has hammered into the wood — 258,000, give or take a few hundred. And he guesses he has sunk about $12,000 into the project.
Any kid in Bridgton, Maine, would want to have Peter Lewis's playhouse in his backyard. And no wonder. Lewis has tricked it out with a drawbridge and two spiral staircases. Best of all, the whole thing floats 21 ft. off the ground. Lewis, however, is no kid, and his masterpiece--a two-story, 6000-pound clubhouse slung from an Eastern white pine--bears scant resemblance to the banged-together shacks of childhood. His treehouseis held aloft by a well-engineered suspension system that imparts nary a scratch to the pine's bark. Hearty beams and mortise-and-tenon joints lend built-for-the-ages solidity. Weather-sealed windows, insulation and a coal-burning stove deliver year-round enjoyment, even in icy Maine.
There is always a place for fun and frivolity in architecture! David Rasmussen, resident treehouse expert, designed and built this “treehouse” with log columns as the main support, since the trees on the property are not strong enough to build on.
