How cool what it be to have an air conditioner designed to be as much art as appliance? By necessity, air conditioning units must cool large spaces and series of rooms – what better form could they take than a tree, organically winding their way through your entire home?

Like a hidden whole-home air conditioning system this overt cooling complex by Ryuichi Tabu is composed of a central unit that branches out as it moves around the house. Instead of hiding the process behind walls, the structure of the system is exposed and celebrated.


The parallels between air conditioning and trees go deep into the roots of this design, with air cycling up from under the floor (ground), through thick trunks and dispersed at various points along the twisting elements above. The air is taken in, cleaned and cooled at the core and the cool-air recycling process starts again.