Trendsurfing: Designer treehouses
By David Rowan
It's all very well pursuing the latest hot trends in interiors. But if you truly want to give your home today's fashionable look, you simply must lift it a dozen feet into the air. The treehouse, that storybook fantasy hammered together in a million childhood imaginations, is fast becoming a very grown-up business indeed, enticing top-flight architects and designers to outdo each other in creating the ultimate arboreal paradise. From elevated dining-rooms to fully-fledged summer houses, today's freshest tree-supported structures are carving international reputations for a new generation of design talent. Just don't be surprised when commissioning them if your bills reach for the skies.
The Duchess of Northumberland can claim partial credit for the revived interest in high-spec treehouse architecture. Her own £3 million masterpiece, opened to the public last January by her castle in Alnwick, Northumberland, was ambitious enough to impress even the snootier specialist magazines, its 120-seat restaurant, elevated classrooms and shop beaming down on to Alnwick Gardens from their perch among 16 mature lime trees. Designed by Napper Architects of Newcastle and John Harris's TreeHouse Company, based in Ayrshire, the extraordinary structure would send the most jaded adult visitor drifting gently back into childhood reveries. No wonder that growing numbers of architectural practices in Britain and abroad are pitching smaller-scale domestic equivalents as the ultimate treats for the affluent home-owner.
Specialist treehouse architects in Europe include Roberto Baciocchi's studio in Arezzo, Italy, and the Baumraum cooperative in Bremen, Germany. Just as if designing a ground-based house, Baumraum customises its tree dwellings according to the shape and size demanded by clients, with fittings and furnishings arranged according to personal tastes. The result, it claims, is "a promise of adventure for the kids, a retreat for the adults, a romantic hideaway close to nature ... bringing back childhood memories, and with them the desire to climb up and enter a magic world".
Hype or otherwise, this emotive appeal to the wealthy consumer's inner child does appear to be causing the sector to boom. The TreeHouse Company has already completed 600 projects here and overseas, typically charging between £20,000 and £200,000 for home offices, fishing lodges or weekend retreats. Its more ambitious commissions have incorporated features such as an Aga and a Jacuzzi, and the company's celebrity-client list includes Jerry Hall and Damon Hill. Its creations may not last nearly as long as bricks and mortar, but the best of them are no less ornate: its "Monticello" treehouse, commissioned as a surprise birthday present for a customer's husband, comes with Doric columns and iron balustrades and is inspired by an Italian Palladian villa.
Demand is also growing at the lower end of the market. Tree House Life, based Surrey, is one company currently offering children's playtime treehouses from £5,000 and family adventure treehouses for around £12,000. BlueForest, based in East Sussex, offers its own "bespoke" commissions from £12,000, although you could easily add another zero if your children are proving particularly demanding.
The trend is not universally appreciated among Britain's lumberingly unimaginative planning officers, and some hard-core environmentalists fret that trees would really rather be left alone. But the best of these creations add magic to the landscape, combining ingenious design skills with ecological sensitivity. Your columnist, for one, is full of admiration. Now, does anyone have a spare oak that they no longer need?
It's all very well pursuing the latest hot trends in interiors. But if you truly want to give your home today's fashionable look, you simply must lift it a dozen feet into the air. The treehouse, that storybook fantasy hammered together in a million childhood imaginations, is fast becoming a very grown-up business indeed, enticing top-flight architects and designers to outdo each other in creating the ultimate arboreal paradise. From elevated dining-rooms to fully-fledged summer houses, today's freshest tree-supported structures are carving international reputations for a new generation of design talent. Just don't be surprised when commissioning them if your bills reach for the skies.
The Duchess of Northumberland can claim partial credit for the revived interest in high-spec treehouse architecture. Her own £3 million masterpiece, opened to the public last January by her castle in Alnwick, Northumberland, was ambitious enough to impress even the snootier specialist magazines, its 120-seat restaurant, elevated classrooms and shop beaming down on to Alnwick Gardens from their perch among 16 mature lime trees. Designed by Napper Architects of Newcastle and John Harris's TreeHouse Company, based in Ayrshire, the extraordinary structure would send the most jaded adult visitor drifting gently back into childhood reveries. No wonder that growing numbers of architectural practices in Britain and abroad are pitching smaller-scale domestic equivalents as the ultimate treats for the affluent home-owner.
Specialist treehouse architects in Europe include Roberto Baciocchi's studio in Arezzo, Italy, and the Baumraum cooperative in Bremen, Germany. Just as if designing a ground-based house, Baumraum customises its tree dwellings according to the shape and size demanded by clients, with fittings and furnishings arranged according to personal tastes. The result, it claims, is "a promise of adventure for the kids, a retreat for the adults, a romantic hideaway close to nature ... bringing back childhood memories, and with them the desire to climb up and enter a magic world".
Hype or otherwise, this emotive appeal to the wealthy consumer's inner child does appear to be causing the sector to boom. The TreeHouse Company has already completed 600 projects here and overseas, typically charging between £20,000 and £200,000 for home offices, fishing lodges or weekend retreats. Its more ambitious commissions have incorporated features such as an Aga and a Jacuzzi, and the company's celebrity-client list includes Jerry Hall and Damon Hill. Its creations may not last nearly as long as bricks and mortar, but the best of them are no less ornate: its "Monticello" treehouse, commissioned as a surprise birthday present for a customer's husband, comes with Doric columns and iron balustrades and is inspired by an Italian Palladian villa.
Demand is also growing at the lower end of the market. Tree House Life, based Surrey, is one company currently offering children's playtime treehouses from £5,000 and family adventure treehouses for around £12,000. BlueForest, based in East Sussex, offers its own "bespoke" commissions from £12,000, although you could easily add another zero if your children are proving particularly demanding.
The trend is not universally appreciated among Britain's lumberingly unimaginative planning officers, and some hard-core environmentalists fret that trees would really rather be left alone. But the best of these creations add magic to the landscape, combining ingenious design skills with ecological sensitivity. Your columnist, for one, is full of admiration. Now, does anyone have a spare oak that they no longer need?
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