I'm about to start building a tree house for my 7 year old. I've been doing some market research around the neighborhood and I've learned that tree houses are distinctly design challenged and poorly built. One neighbor is on the right track however. Instead of wrecking the tree by building the tree house entirely affixed to the tree, he has built a frame around the tree trunk anchored to the ground. He did this to avoid riddleing an enormous, ancient live oak tree with nails. Next, he plywood decked the 8 ft tall platform taking care to cut holes and fit the deck around the the tree trunk; then framed in walls and a flat roof so that tree limbs passed through two walls. He added some composition shingles and cut a hole in the floor and added a rope ladder. It is a safe, sound, dry in the rain, and his great tree is unscathed. Alas, it looks rather uninspired, as you might expect. It occurred to me that one of these talented designer starting to do these marvelously handsome manufactured houses ought to do up an modernist, or at a least contemporary looking manufactured (or at least ready to bolt together) tree house with a raised frame, floor, walls and ceiling designed so the buyer could cut the trunk and limb holes himself and wind up with a tre chic looking tree house with a minimum of work, something that might add a little to the look of the home and lot rather than be an eye sore. I reckon the market is gigantic even assuming only a 1 percent market penetration. At ten percent one could quickly spin the business off and move to Santa Margarita Ligure. Has anyone seen a Phillipe Starck manufactured tree house? I know France has some great trees (or any other talented designer for that matter)? It seems a shame to trash a beautiful home with an ugly tree house when most of the time the kids aren't building them anyway. And the carpentry challenged parents would be most appreciative.
Are you saying that you...
Are you saying that you think someone should design a tree house that has a modern design...ex. Frank Lloyd Wright-ish style? If so, then you are missing the whole point of a tree house...a place for kids to play. I had a tree house when young and I liked the rugged look of it. I would not have wanted a 'modern' style tree house. Design like that usually doesn't appeal to 9-year-olds. Treehouses are places for kids to play...not for grown-ups who worry about design to live in(unless of course you are the Swiss Family Robinson).
Now, if you were just saying that someone should design a pre-fabricated tree house whether it be of wood, plastic, whatever...than okay. I have nothing against the idea of pre-fabricated tree-houses for those people who don't have the time or know-how to build one themselves. Actually, they already make those. But it would be pretty hard to pre-fabricate an in-detail treehouse design(one that wraps around the tree, etc) because for a really in-detail treehouse design, the size of the tree trunk, location of the tree branches, etc would have to come into effect.
A treehouse
should be a magical and unique response to the individual (unique) tree that it complements and "completes." It is an architectural opportunity 'par excellence.'
Responses to a "tree house competition" in Kansas City this year brought more than one "earthbound treehouse" -- one was an open-topped pavilion with its feet on the ground and its heart in the sky: a cubic form of horizontal slats (with specific horizontal views framed) and its sides and top surrounded by the leafy limbs of its "big brother" soaring above. Looking up one saw only leafy green. . .
There is a web sites which describes construction methods for aerial treehouses that minimize damage and maximize the potential for movement of the structure in the wind; the link below may be one such.
http://www.thetreehouseguide.com/
Do I detect a bit of agism here? 🙂
I'm not sure that I agree with you that kids would not enjoy a modernist tree house. Good design is good design, whether you are 4, 40, 64 or 104.
I would have liked a Phillip Johnson glass house style tree house very much, when I was a kid.
Phillipe Starck has designed some toys (one was a scooter car I believe) for kids that are unmistakeably modern and I have not heard kids turn up their nose at them for not being rustic enough, or Star Wars enough.
And if we want to advance modernity as a desirable aesthetic, we damned well ought to be finding ways to let it speak to our children so that they will grow up with a taste for it. Why should they have to grow up with a taste for mediocre design?
Isn't modernity flexible enough to create designs children can love? If it isn't, then perhaps modernity DOES indeed deserve to be relegated to the ash heap of design history.
My 7 year old son gets a huge charge out Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring. He hasn't got a clue about how Copeland was weaving folk song melodies into the piece, nor the meaning of doing such a thing within the larger historical river of symphonic music. He just LIKES it. I suspecte he (or any other kid) would go ga ga at a futuristic octagonal tree house that was a riff on Wright's disciple's pedestal house upon Mulholland Drive.
I hardly intended to turn a tree house into a philosophical issue, when I started, but perhaps it is exactly the place to make a significant point. Isms that can't appeal to the young are quite likely to be cul de sacs. If modernity is so sterile that it can't make a child's heart soar, then perhaps modernity is not for grown ups either. afterall, grown-ups have hearts too.
I'm not trying to say a...
I'm not trying to say a child couldn't enjoy a modern design treehouse, but it all depends on the child. My tree house might have been 'rustic,' but that didn't mean it was not well-designed. It was extremely cool-looking and was situated around three closely-set trees, and yes, it had support beams that extended from the ground. It mulitple floors, four different doors with rope ladders, windows with glass. All the kids in the neighborhood wanted my tree house. I was proud of it. My dad and uncle built it, and I helped where I could being 8-years-old. My uncle is an architect so he came up with the design, made sure it was safe and durable. I also know when my parents sold the house a few years ago...that treehouse was a big selling point to those buyers who had children. It also was not tasteless because it was rustic. Not everyhitng that isn't modern-looking is tasteless.
I, myself, would not have wanted a glass treehouse. Part of the allure of my treehouse was that my parents couldn't see in it.
I could see some kids liking a very modern-style treehouse, but that should be up to the kid...not the parent. My argument was mainly against pre-fabricated 'modern-style' treehouse. I really don't think there would be a huge market for them, and I also don't think they'd be able to design a very in-detail pre-fabricated one due to some of the restrictions I pointed out in my previous post.
As a child, I thought some of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses were cool-looking. Doesn't mean I wanted my treehouse to look like one. I got to choose the style of my treehouse, and I wanted it to resemble the ski-lodge we used to go to. Hence, the rustic quality. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the treehouse is for your kids. It's the kids preferences that should go into designing a treehouse. It's, afterall, a place for kids to play, not for grown-ups to admire the aesthetics of.
I apparently accidentally...
I apparently accidentally deleted a bit over a paragraph somehow..hmm.
Anywho, I apparently deleted the last part of the glass treehouse paragraph. I think I said something along the lines of a glass treehouse would intimidate me as a child. We played in the treehouse and sometimes we got a bit rough with wrestling, chasing each other. A glass treehouse would certainly put a damper on the 'quality' of play. I'd be too afraid of damaging it.
Also, I don't see what Applachian Spring has to do with anything. I liked classical music, opera music, etc growing up. Still do. At a young age, I definitely wasn't able to understand all the meaning behind opera. I just thought it was pretty. What that has to do with whether a child would want a modern-style treehouse, I have no idea *shrug* I guess you meant that a child might be able to appreciate the look of a moder-style treehouse even if the didn't understand the architecture, ect behind it. Sure, I could agree with that, but the child might still prefer a more rustic treehouse, or maybe one that looks like a pirate ship(that would have been cool) or an airplane or a rocket. I guess all I'm saying is that it's the child's preferences that should be paramount in designing any treehouse for them.
From time to time...
Regarding your *shrug* and Copeland's relevance, his work has sometimes been described as being part of the modernist tradition of 20th Century symphonic music. Perhaps some dissonant 12 tone harmony composer would have made the point more clearly. *sigh*
Next, regarding your assertions about prefab treehouses, if I understand you correctly, what you're saying is: you're backing down from your overbroad assertion that no kids would want a prefab tree house in a modernist idiom, and qualifying it by saying *shrug* some might. But you just can't quite give up your too broad assertion, so you say *shrug* there wouldn't be very many of them. I think they would, especially if they were exhuberantly colored.
Regarding the difficulty of fitting a prefab to nature's infinitely variable within limits trees, I find it difficult to believe that some nimble minded designer, or engineer could not come up with means for overcoming that obstacle. My notion was that the structure would have some assembly required with batteries not included. 🙂 I figured the points of assembly would allow a parent to cut away spaces for the limbs to pass through. In the age of landing on asteroids and planets around the solar system, I just do not think building a manufactured tree house that is adaptable to different limb locations is beyond the pale of reason.
You sound like you loved your tree house. You might be the perfect person to transmute that enthusiasm into a modernist tree house, if you have imagination and skill to match your enthusiasm.
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