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The Guesthouse

Your first stop upon arriving at the Treehotel grounds is the Guesthouse, where you check in to your room. The nine rooms in here give off a distinct throwback vibe, drawing on inspiration from designs of the 1930s to 1950s. Don’t worry, though — they still have Wi-Fi.

The Blue Cone

Set upon posts, this square red building is raised off the ground and handicap accessible. In stark contrast to its rustic exterior, the Blue Cone’s birch interior emanates a calm, sleek Swedish design. It also provides four beds, a sleeping loft, lounge area, and bathroom.

The Dragonfly

Perfectly suited for use as a meeting room, the Dragonfly boasts a table that seats 12, a lounge area, bathroom, and two smaller group rooms. Even if you’re ditching work for a personal stay, you’ll find that this lodging comfortably sleeps four people. Whatever the reason for your visit may be, the Drangonfly’s large panoramic windows are sure keep you feeling close to nature.

The UFO

The name helps paint an accurate mental picture of this silver orb nestled into the trees. To top it all off, guests gain entry to the UFO via a retractable staircase that stretches down to the ground. Inside, you’ll find a much cozier scene, with a main room that accommodates up to five people.

The Cabin

On first approach, the Cabin appears to float weightless in the trees. Intended for two guests, it’s a long capsule-shaped room with a double bed, bathroom, and terrace.

The Bird’s Nest

Camouflaged in the surrounding trees, one might trek right past this room if they didn’t know what to look for. Completely encased in branches like the massive nest of a bird, the Bird’s Nest is also accessed via a retractable staircase.

The 7th Room

As you’ve probably already guest, this addition came about only after the first six rooms were designed and built. Looking up at it from ground level, you’ll see a reflection of the surrounding forest printed on its underside. But while it blends into its surroundings on the outside, the 7th Room offers a very different atmosphere inside, with contemporary decor and massive northern-facing windows that facilitate views of the northern lights. Guests can even lay in a large cargo net off the deck to take in the sounds of the forest and obstructed views of the sky from a height of about 32 feet off the ground.

The Mirrorcube

Distinct even among unique designs, the Mirrorcube looks exactly like its name suggests. Its aluminum-framed base was contoured around the base of a neighboring tree before the reflective glass walls were added to complete the cubical concept. Like the other rooms, though, its interior brings nothing but warmth, comfort, and sleek amenities for two guests to enjoy.
Nearby buildings offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner options, as well as showers, a sauna, and a bar. When you’re not too busy enjoying the spectacular views from your room, visiting with other patrons in the sauna or Guesthouse, or eating your way through Swedish delicacies at the on-site restaurant, you might find yourself taking in the nearby hiking, rafting, kayaking, wildlife viewing, horseback riding, fishing, or fat bike riding options.

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The renovation will begin in May 2023 and be completed in 2026 for a 2027 reopening ahead of an important occasion: the 1,125th anniversary of Sugawara no Michizane’s death. Keeping the shrine completely out of commission for a three-year renovation wasn’t an option, since Tenjin is worshipped internationally and Dazaifu Tenmagu draws up to 10 million tourists every year. The renovation will repair the hall’s thatched Japanese cypress bark roof and its lacquered interiors, and make the whole structure more resistant to earthquakes.

Fujimoto’s single-story temporary sanctuary hall will be set up in front of the honden hall to host rituals and worship. Made of steel beams, it’s designed so it can be quickly built in just a few months between February and May 2023. The temporary hall is the same size as the main hall but will be open to the air, set on a black platform with a single solid wall in the back. A ramp enables wheelchair access, and unlike the main shrine, the temporary hall will also allow visitors to enter without taking their shoes off.

The temporary hall’s defining feature is its tilting green roof, which will disguise and soften the construction going on behind it while also creating the spectacle of a “floating forest.” Grasses, shrubs, and full-size trees will be transplanted onto it for the effect of a mature forest.

At a press conference, Fujimoto said, “I aimed for a design that can connect the tradition of Dazaifu Tenmangu shrine with today and pass it down to future generations.”

“We will build a ‘cave’ in front of Kumamoto Station to welcome everyone to visit,” says the team at the Dazaifu Tenmangu shrine. “Since it has only been exhibited for three years, we wanted it to be a place that will be pleasing to the Tenjin Sama and all the visitors. It has been designed to blend in with the surrounding landscape, carrying on the tradition and connecting to the future.”

Sou Fujimoto’s unconventional nature-oriented approach to architecture has produced some incredibly unique projects in the past. For his “Flowing Cloud” resort complex in China, the architect created a terraced plan cascading down a hillside, partially covered by a ceiling made of woven grasses. In Budapest, the Hungarian House of Music revives a 300-acre city park with 97,000 square feet of both open and enclosed exhibits and theaters, all topped by a distinctive circular roof inspired by the vibration of sound. And in Maebashi, Japan, the architect’s renovation of the Shiroiya Hotel produced a faux hillside covered in greenery, trees and walkways.

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The precision of this installation was no mistake. The architects went to great lengths to make sure their creations felt like a natural part of the forest, as if the tents were giant drops of water that landed there and remained frozen in place. The design process began with 3D scans of the natural environment, which mapped the position, size, and shape of each tree down to the tiniest details. Yuko Nagayama Associates then determined how their massive teardrops could fit in the available spaces without disturbing the natural setting.

The architects wanted their tents to enhance and reflect the surrounding trees while also maintaining their own dramatic presence. Standing more than 30 feet high, each of the three inflatable tents faces a different direction, its pointed tip visible from a distance. For those inside the tents, the not-quite-transparent material blurs the forest without blocking it out, lending the experience a surreal, dreamlike effect. The pointed shape encourages visitors to look straight up at the canopy and the sky.

Each of the three tents has a different function. One is for sleeping, one is for gathering, and one is for solitary study or contemplation. Visitors were invited to stay in them overnight, their sleeping bags providing their only cover in a place where privacy is hard to come by.

The event took place at Kiyoharu Art Colony, which was established on the former site of an elementary school in 1983. The village includes museums, studios, restaurants, and shops set among birch trees and Yoshino cherry trees, with arts exhibitions taking place indoors and out.

Architectural works on site include creations by famous architects, including the Museum of Light by Tadao Ando, where exhibited pieces interact with natural light; the Kiyoharu Shirabaka Art Museum by Yoshio Taniguchi; the studio of painter Ryuzaburo Umehara created by Isoya Yoshida; and even a portion of the original stairs from the Eiffel Tower. One of the most popular features on the grounds is the Tetsu “treehouse teahouse” created by architect Terunobu Fujimori, which stands on a central pillar of an 80-year-old Japanese cypress and hovers four meters above the ground.

On Instagram, Yuko Nagayama Associates revealed that they weren’t quite ready to move on from their unusual teardrop tents once Hokuto Art Program ed.1 was over. For lead architect Yuko Nagayama’s birthday, the firm commissioned a special cake from Katsutadai cake shop VIN ROSE that captured the scene in sugar, matcha powder, and little birch trees made of pasta.

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The Pudding Creek route takes riders on a seven-mile round trip experience in an area of the redwood forests that most tourists never see. Departing from Fort Bragg, a city on California’s Mendocino Coast, the tour zooms through the Noyo River Canyon. You’ll pass deep into the old-growth redwood groves, home to trees that are up to 2,000 years old, as well as Douglas firs, alders, berry bushes, lush ferns, wooden trestle bridges, and an abundance of other wildlife.

A certified guide leads the “train” of riders on the tour, and you can even pay extra to tow your dog friend behind you on a trailer. Passengers disembark at Glen Blair Junction for a 50-minute layover to have a picnic or take a walk along a loop trail dotted with wildflowers.

You don’t have to be a seasoned biking enthusiast or even in particularly good shape to enjoy this trip. Though you’ll be pedaling for most of the tour, the two-person, custom-built railbikes feature electric assist to carry you effortlessly through the forest. Since they follow the railroad tracks, you don’t even have to steer, which means you’re free to spend the entire tour gazing around at the scenery and taking photos if you like. Each railbike has four wheels and is made of lightweight upcycled materials.

The train tracks were originally laid by a 19th-century logging company that needed to get trees from the forest to sawmills and shipping facilities on the coast. The Fort Bragg Railroad grew to 40 miles by 1925, stretching inland to Willits. The less-than-pleasant fumes of the trains’ pot-bellied stoves and gas engines gave the route its “Skunk Train” nickname (now the name of the company operating the railbikes).

Within a few decades, the railroad was used more for passenger trains than lumber, and then landslides closed a 1,122-foot-long section. Skunk Train made use of these sections by offering two short train rides from either end, and of course, the Redwood Route Railbike tour.

The Pudding Creek Railbikes tour runs daily, and rates are $250 per bike for the two-hour ride. Children age 6 and older are allowed to ride. If you’re feeling a little more adventurous, there’s now a harder and longer option available: a 25-mile trip along a remote stretch beyond the closed tunnel that takes about four hours. The Railbikes on the Noyo package costs $495 for a two-person bike, lunch included. Get details on the Skunk Train website, and check out lots of fun footage on the company’s Instagram.

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“I got to spend a few days and nights in some of the Treehotel rooms right before the pandemic, and left with a sense of rejuvenation from complete immersion into nature,” says BIG founder and creative director Bjarke Ingels. “I couldn’t help wondering if there was a way to take the immersion one step further – and almost instantly the idea of inviting not only the human visitors but also the resident bird and bat population to cohabit a spherical swarm of nests came to life. After our first conversations with Ulf Öhman from Norrbotten Ornithological Association we were relieved to learn that birds don’t drop where they nest – so there is hope for the glass to remain clear within this cloud of aviary architecture.”

As the name suggests, Biosphere is a spherical suspended room that offers habitation not just to humans, but wildlife as well. BIG worked with Swedish ornithologist Ulf Öhman to craft an exterior that’s capable of welcoming up to 350 families of birds, strengthening biodiversity in the area. In addition to bird houses of various sizes designed to attract different species, there are bat houses, bee houses, and bird feeders. The treehouse is accessed by a suspended bridge stretching from the ground to the pine canopies.

“Inventories in Norrbotten County, carried out both by us as ornithologists and by the County Administrative Board, show that a number of different bird populations are decreasing,” says Öhman, chairman of the Norbotten Ornithological Association. “Forestry has led to a. Reduced number of natural holes in trees where breeding birds nest. The installation of bird nests is therefore an important measure to take. Furthermore, climate change leads to the insect boom happening earlier in the year, and by the time the birds’ eggs hatch, the boom has already passed.”

“Feeding is an important support mechanism for the birds that stay in Northern Sweden and require food during winter. Demonstrating the use of bird nests and feeding, not just at the Treehotel but for people to install near their own homes, is valuable. An initiative from Treehotel to take such measures may inspire their visitors to do the same.”

If you think the outside is cool, check out the interiors. While BIG decided to craft a comfortable space that emphasizes pragmatism and simplicity, the glass walls let guests watch as birds enter and leave the birdhouses attached to the exterior. It’s a birdwatcher’s dream, almost as if you could cozy up inside a tree trunk yourself and peer out at natural bird nests tucked within the branches.

The checkered pattern of the bird houses allows glimpses of the forest outside and transmission of natural daylight. The room also includes a living area with a chair swing, a bathroom, and a lofted bedroom. These dark interiors are designed to direct visitors’ gaze outward instead of within. Even better, guests can climb up onto the roof for 360-degree views, giving them an intimate sense of immersion in nature.

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Contributing to its awe-inspiring presence is the fact that it’s three stories tall – certainly not the kind of modest structure you’d expect to come upon while walking in the woods. Designed as a vacation home for a Finnish-born client who now lives in California, the stark modern cabin is visually inspired by its setting in remote Kontiolahti, within rocky terrain full of jagged boulders.

This sense of drama is integral to the experience, according to the architects. They want visitors to glimpse it through the trees as they approach on foot, wondering what on earth this “mystical dark object” could be. Its facade is entirely inscrutable by night, and in the daytime, it’s no less mysterious, albeit a little less intimidating.

The polyhedron-shaped building is made of prefabricated cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels, a relatively new innovation in the world of engineered lumber that’s extra strong and lightweight, enabling timber buildings to take on all kinds of shapes and sizes. The thick wood walls are also air-insulated, and all functional and utility elements are disguised within them for a minimalist effect. Even the roof is made of solid wood, oiled to protect it from the elements.

Meteorite’s interior is enchanting in a whole different way, lined with pale wood and brightened up by natural light. Transparent acrylic railings along the stairs and landings add to that sense of airiness, while hardware-free black cabinetry is set within the walls to create a visual anchor. A central atrium rises all the way to the top floor, where a 107-square-foot skylight provides unobstructed views of the stars. A net on the third floor even offers a built-in hammock for lounging, reading, and napping.

“Meteorite is not a large house, but on the inside it represents a completely new 3-dimensional open-concept way of organizing living space,” says Ateljé Sotamaa co-founder Kivi Sotamaa. “Unlike traditional houses where each room has a specific predetermined purpose, Meteorite’s architecture supports more dynamic relationships of its residents and a variety of life situations. Digital design and new prefabrication and construction technologies enable the creation of unique, aesthetically high-quality ecological wood buildings that add experiential value to their locations.”

Client Ulla-Maaria Koivula, who’s the founder and CEO of education technology provider ThingLink, had the cabin built on her grandparent’s old homestead. It was initially envisioned as a vacation home that would be visited a few times a year, but due to the pandemic and California wildfires, the family decided to live in it full-time and work from home.

”Every building materializes our relationship with the natural environment,” Koivula says. ”My inspiration to have a unique wood house built in this country sprouted from the rocky hills and rugged woods of Koli, rich in erratic boulders that also served Finland’s defense during the Winter War. Meteorite reflects the connection my soul has to Finnish nature, and looking through one of its large windows to the misty fields around takes me back to the calm days of childhood.”

“We use the house as a creative space for remote work, hobbies, and hanging out together. In the old days, families gathered into a large horizontal kitchen space to be together. We now interconnect vertically with each other and with the surrounding nature. In this time and age with effective telecommunications and speed trains to the metropolitan region, this is a paradise for us to get settled into the good life.”

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“How can one feel protected? What can be done when one feels vulnerable?” the Mexico-based studio mused. “This question was accompanied by an image, or perhaps a memory: a frightened child covering himself with a light bedsheet as he peeks out to make sure he can see what is going on around him.”

The result was a home that resembles exactly that: a concrete roof reminiscent of a light bedsheet nestled into the soft grass of the landscape, and a semicircle window rising in a gentle slope like the head of a little one checking to see if it’s safe yet.

Called “The Hill in Front of the Glen,” the new home in the forests of Morelia, Mexico begins with a walkway lined with concrete walls leading down into the underground retreat. The passageway is wide enough for one person to comfortably navigate but narrow enough to prevent two people from walking side-by-side, casting visitors into “a pilgrimage of solitude.” Along the journey, a large tree intersects the footpath, forcing a deviation in direction.

This pathway eventually leads to the solid pearled stone steps and heavy steel entry door. Once inside the concrete vault, guests can explore the more social living, dining, and kitchen areas on one side, or the more private bedroom spaces on the other. They’ll even find that the light sources have been matched to the intended mood and purpose of each wing.

“Public areas on the left side of the house are completely exposed to the wooded ravine, and on the right side are open more timidly to a courtyard with treetop and sky views,” HW Studio notes.

The contemplative ambience of this project was a good fit for the firm, who has a longstanding history of valuing quiet designs. They explain that “HW Studio derives its name from the union of the letter H – considered a silent letter and a graphic representation of silence in Spanish – and the letter W – taken from the Japanese concept Wabi-Sabi, which has no Spanish translation or direct equivalence with any Western concept – understood as the beauty of the impermanent.”

They add that “We understand architecture as being the act of placing limits within the void and that these limits achieve an elegant beauty of humble simplicity.”

The home also blends discreetly into the surrounding forest, according to the client’s wishes. It was never meant to be the showcase of the setting.

“The architecture is like an accent on the words of a poem, like a comma or a question mark, but never the actual poem itself,” the studio explains. “The poem is already written by the pines, the oaks, the sweet acacia, the fireflies, the road, the fence, the neighbor’s water well, the earth, the orchard, and the nightingale.”

To achieve that goal, the architecture firm used minimal materials to complete the simplistic design. Concrete takes center stage, creating the structure of the “lifted layer of grass,” while wood floors and furniture warm up the coldness of the walls. Meanwhile, steel accents like door handles and clothing rods provide hints at the modern world that created this hidden bungalow.

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Commissioned by the tiny home startup Bambau and designed by architecture studio Precht, “Bert” is an imaginative modular home that can sprout up vertically as well as horizontally in the form of additional prefabricated rooms and stairwells. The layout of the home mimics that of a tree, with its upward movement and ability to branch out.

For inspiration for their build, studio co-founders Chris and Fei Tang Precht tried to get inside the mind of a child. “As architects, no matter if young or old, we have an inner child that looks at the world with playfulness and curiosity,” says co-founder Fei Tang Precht, adding that “that curiosity makes us want to explore, experiment, and create. That same curiosity gave birth to Bert.”

They even used elements from children’s entertainment within their creation. “We are fully aware that architecture is this serious and profound craft with a long culture and tradition. You see that when we architects find reference for our projects in art, philosophy, literature, or nature,” says Chris Precht. “For this project, we also looked at art to find reference. But not at Michelangelo or Dali. Rather we looked at cartoon characters of Sesame Street or Minions.”

The name even came from the Sesame Street character Bert, beloved for his long, cylindrical head, while the structure’s round, oversized windows were intended to look a bit like the one-eyed minions from the Despicable Me film series.

“We took a playful look at this project and wanted to create a rather unique character than a conventional building,” adds Chris, “a quirky looking character that becomes part of the wildlife of a forest. I think this quirkiness can create feelings and emotions. And maybe these are attributes in architecture that are missing these days.”

The treehouse begins like any sturdy sapling, building its foundation into the ground with a circular base. Then “the trunk” of the edifice begins to grow, with tube-shaped units like kitchens, living rooms, and bathrooms being stacked on top of each other or creating new horizontal limbs.

Constructed from wood, the exterior is covered in leaf-shaped shingles to give the treehouse an element of camouflage in the forest. Inside, dark fabrics keep the home cozy and hold in the heat. If an off-grid system is required or desired, Bert can be fitted with solar panels on the roof and a composting toilet and water treatment facility can be built into the ground floor. Alternate plans are available for Bert in less forested regions, too, as it can be fabricated from steel instead of wood.

Studio Precht, based out of mountains of Austria, continually tries to build distinctive, climate appropriate, and culturally defining structures. They disdain the “International Style” of buildings made of concrete and steel that are essentially “a copy of a copy of a copy” and make cities look indistinguishable from each other.

Chris and Fei “know that buildings like Bert are not the path forward on a big scale, but [we] think as an industry, we need to dare more, try more, and experiment more towards a more diverse future of our cities.”

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Each of the 49 trees in the installation was brought up to New York from the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, a site where the impacts of climate change have already come to fruition. This real world ghost forest was inundated by salt water from a nearby estuarine river after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, causing each tree to start rotting from the inside. The standing dead forest looks a lot like others around the country, like the beetle-kill forest near Lin’s family’s summer vacation destination in southwestern Colorado, which helped inspire the project.

Stretching 40 feet into the air, the bare crowns of the cedars remain the same as the living landscape transforms around them. Their placement has been carefully choreographed, with Lin considering each one as its own individual character. The soundtrack of bird and animal calls, created by Lin using the Macaulay Library sound archive of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, adds an extra layer of mournfulness to the installation. All of these species were once common on Mannahatta (Manhattan Island), the ancestral homeland of the Lenape-Delaware people, more than 500 years ago. None are still present in the area due to urbanization and human activity, and many of the remaining species could be lost in the decades to come. Scientists project that by 2100, 50 percent of all currently living species on the planet could go extinct.

“Each tree is a monument to climate change,” Lin writes on ArtForum. “The project has an advocacy component, which we are using to talk about farming, forestry, degradation, and development. I’m also matching the amount of carbon used in installing the forest by planting a thousand trees around the city. Over ten years, we will actually offset what it took to create the 5.3-ton piece by a factor of ten. Global warming is one of the gravest threats we face, and as an artist and an activist I don’t want to just make you aware of its dire consequences; I want to offer real solutions.”

“Our kickoff public event was a panel discussion on nature-based strategies to combat climate change, and we will continue to explore these issues in other programs throughout the project. Reforming our agricultural, ranching, and forestry practices and increasing protection of both our land and waters could offset between 50 and 90 percent of our current emissions, as well as protect and restore our biodiversity. After the horrific actions of the last administration, we simply don’t have another four years to waste.”

Lin describes the trees as “sentinels,” bearing witness as the park transitions from spring to summer to fall. By the time the installation ends on November 14th, they’ll blend in to the dormant trees around them. After they’re removed, they’ll be recycled into building materials and tree mulch. If you can’t visit in person, check out the audio tour of “Ghost Forest” and listen to the full soundtrack at the Madison Square Park Conservancy website.

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The architects identified three major needs in the city of Pune, which itself is one of the fastest-growing cities in all of Southeast Asia. With a burgeoning population, a thriving IT industry, and increasing demand for education, high quality schools are a top priority. Though it’s quite compact in size compared to other major Indian cities, with decent access to public transit, few areas are walkable, and there are no cycling tracks to speak of. Like many industrialized cities around the world, Pune also struggles with poor air quality.

NUDES’ design addresses all of these common urban issues. Forest School can accommodate a large number of students and help boost Pune’s reputation for both innovation and high quality of life. A double-height auditorium occupies the lower two floors, while the rest are dedicated entirely to classroom space. The rooftop cycling track, which features two bridges for crossing between the towers, offers a fun place to ride a bike with unforgettable views.

The infinity symbol on the roof may be this project’s standout feature, but those stepped balconies covered in plants are definitely eye-catching, and they’re functional, too. NUDES envisions them as one big “green living skin” that can help remove pollutants from the air through phytoremediation.

“The design explores the relation between nature and pedagogy in dense urban settlements built on the foundations of ‘Grow,’ ‘Learn,’ ‘Reuse,’ ‘Plant’ and ‘Play,’” explain the architects. “Sited in Pune approximately three hours by road from Mumbai, the city has witnessed dramatic urban growth in the last decade. The project harbors two ‘green’ cylindrical volumes stitched by a rooftop ‘infinity’ loop track.”

“Each cylindrical volume represents the stage of phased construction with planned programmatic activities. The project explores the dynamics and logistics of a vibrant space for student-centric interaction and learning. The ‘green’ skin can be serviced and maintained by a peripheral service track that is accessible from both landing and mid-landing levels on every floor by horticulturists.”

Forest School is just the latest unusual educational design from NUDES. The firm previously designed a conceptual school in Malawi with sinuous curving walls made of stacked straw bales in response to an architectural competition by Archstorming on behalf of an NGO called Active Africa. The brief called for the use of local materials and construction systems, a focus on sustainability, and a modular solution that can be built in phases. Straw Bale School features a modular “ladder” component to form a structural system that’s fluid and easily expanded.

NUDES is led by architect Nuru Karim, who received his Masters in Architecture and Urbanism from the Architectural Association London in 2006 and has previously worked for Zaha Hadid Architects. He explains that “NUDES operates within the realm of cross-disciplinary cultures of art, architecture, and computational design powered by digital ‘making’ tools addressing larger social, cultural, and environmental networks.”

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German artist Jörg Gläscher captures this feeling in a stunning series of temporary land art installations he created as part of a visual pandemic diary called C19. Though he works primarily in the field of documentary photography and photojournalism, covering stories like violent division in democratic governments worldwide, he also produces more personal works that tell emotional stories. During the pandemic, with his usual work disrupted, Gläscher retreated to a secluded location near Hamburg, where he spent his days gathering deadwood and constructing nine massive waves on the forest floor.

The slightly wavy branches are gathered and woven into wave shapes symbolizing the way in which nature can be an all-destroying force, capable of bringing even a rich country like Germany to a complete standstill. The largest of the waves measured 13 feet high and almost 30 feet wide. After photographing each sculpture, Gläscher dispersed the branches back to the forest floor, allowing that pent-up energy to calmly dissipate. The resulting images have a sense of eeriness, tension, and foreboding, especially with the foggy winter woods in the background. The unexpected and uneasy visual of undulating branches building into tides across the forest floor echoes the pandemic-induced feeling of helplessness in the face of nature that many of us personally experienced.

Describing the wave as “a periodic oscillation or a unique disturbance in the state of a system,” Gläscher explains how creating and destroying these waves reassured him that things aren’t always as bad as they seem. “Nothing is ever as it seems,” he says. “Are appearances deceptive? No, they are not necessarily deceptive, but they join me on a journey, wash over me, swirl through me, make me anxious, retreat, and then rush towards me all over again. I can go through them, stop them, touch them, but everything comes to a standstill and goes no further. I have to let it go. Standing up, the second wave rolls over me. It is unique, it was unique. I lift my head, take it by the hand and recognize the vibration and the recurring sensation, and with it the fear disappears. Should it come, I will be ready.”

Gläscher’s “The Diary Complex: C19” series is all about channelling the emotions that a major disruptive event can elicit in a positive, healing way. Other works in the series include small forest huts made of branches, portraits of people mid-scream, storm clouds, discarded latex gloves, and 14 pages of hand-typed corona RNA.

“It is about finding a fruitful, rather than fearful, way to deal with fear,” Gläscher explains of the series. “It’s not about allowing the fear to grow into the spirit of things, or unleashing the ghost of fear; it’s about not allowing the fear to become neurotic; when that happens, the fear can become an instrument of populism.”

The post COVID-Induced Anxiety Gets a New Face in This Series of Wooden Waves Crashing in a Forest first appeared on Dornob.

Tokyo-based Klein Dytham Architecture was tasked with designing the three new cone-shaped buildings full of kid-centric features. With its name translating to “stick up” in Japanese, PokoPoko has a decidedly playful look about it, with each roof pointing in a slightly different direction. The architects wanted it to have a lighthearted feel that drew from organic shapes, including the contours of the nearby mountains.

Each one of the cone-shaped roofs is made of local timber, stretching up to a steel and glass skylight. The architects chose pine lumber skinned with plywood sheets for both strength and visual appeal, while the interior cladding has been dotted with textural knots.

Each cone has its own function. The middle cone hosts cooking activities using fresh ingredients grown on the premises and offers food-related workshops to keep both kids and parents entertained. Features include a giant wood-log pizza oven. The second cone contains a white netted structure allowing kids to climb all the way up to the skylight or dive into a ball pit at the base, enabling playtime even when it’s rainy outside. The third cone is a relaxation zone where parents can get a drink, sit by the fire, or read a book while they keep an eye on their roughhousing children. A ring of glass at the base of each cone offers panoramic views of the woods outside.

“PokoPoko can be both a lively and a peaceful place, seamlessly connecting to the forest outside, making one feel like having spent a day in nature even on a rainy day,” the architects explain. “The project has been an instant success, and the hotel and clubhouse have been in demand as people look too to take timeout from Japan’s cities and head to the countryside for staycations which are conducive to social distancing.”

PokoPoko looks a lot like a larger version of Jikka, a picturesque retirement home by architect Issei Suma designed for a group of women in the rural prefecture of Shizuoka. With its teepee-like design and loads of intelligent accessible features, including a spiraling tub that a wheelchair user can roll right into, Jikka captured the imagination of the world when it made its internet debut in 2016. But, alas, being a private home, it was never going to be open to the public.

If you love that storybook feel and want to experience it for yourself, PokoPoko is the place to go. They’ll be open to the public sometime later this summer, so keep an eye on the resort website to make reservations when they’re available.

The post Fairytale Clubhouse Rises from a Clearing in a Japanese Forest first appeared on Dornob.

Contrary to appearances, the architects didn’t kill any living trees or strip them of their leaves for this project. They instead created faux dead trees to serve as a decorative framework for each cluster, piercing through layers of elevated terraces and the rooftops of the cabins themselves. Each individual cabin faces a different direction, offering unique views of the vegetated mountains around them.

Located within the hotel district of Senbo Resort Hangzhou, these “nest residences” are envisioned as “a group of cabins landing on the branches,” almost as if they were living creatures themselves. The architects wanted to avoid over-realism by adding fake leaves to the trunks, deciding instead to mimic the way some animals choose to nest in dead trees. Since the clusters are nestled within the forest, however, they maintain a relatively convincing appearance.

The WH Studio team explains that “the design of stacking abstract volumes of residential prototype has precedents in Europe and Japan, but most are more inclined to geometrical manipulation and often limited to the internal experience. Based on the commercial character of this project and the mountain environment, we focused on the balance between abstraction and image, indoor and outdoor, geometry and nature.”

“The experience of the Tree House starts with ‘tree climbing.’ We pay special attention to the outdoor path and experience the zigzagging path like ‘climbing,’ outdoor terraces of different heights are like ‘tree branches’ for little rest, and the house is equivalent to the ‘fruit’ of the tree. The path has the experience of winding, light and shade changes, while the terrace is a comfortable outdoor activity space. Although each Tree House contains several artificial trees with structural functions, it is conceptually a ‘big tree’ composed of three elements of ‘path-platform-house.’”

The six cabins in each cluster assume one of two forms: a simple gabled style, and another with four rooftop slopes (with the latter meant to evoke the feel of a fairytale cabin). One style also has a balcony tucked beneath its roof for more introversion, while the other has a projecting balcony for more extroversion. The architects express regrets that their original design was a bit watered down once it was actually built. More specifically, they hoped for a stronger fairytale effect, with shingled roofs and slides leading from the higher cabins to the lower platforms.

Whether it was a result of budgeting or just the clients’ preferences, the architects’ original designs were ultimately altered for a more streamlined modern look. But that hasn’t dampened the popularity of the cabins, which have quickly become a glamorous check-in point for both celebrities and the wannabe Insta-famous. WH Studio theorizes that this warm reception comes from the cabins’ ability to meet “the psychological needs of people to return to primitive imagination.”

There’s definitely a little bit of an uncanny Disneyland feel to these tree house nests, but in a good way, and indeed, it would be hard to resist a selfie or two while staying here.

The post Stacked Treehouses at China’s Senbo Resort Designed to Mimic Nests first appeared on Dornob.

In Rankoshi, Japan, Tokyo-based architecture firm Florian Busch Architects has created a retreat that balances individual privacy with the companionship of large gatherings, giving everyone a chance to enjoy the peaceful seclusion of the forest. Designed to mimic the shape of a branch, “House in the Forest” acknowledges that solitude is good for the soul, especially when set within a beautiful natural environment.

Feeling “disturbed” by the encroachment of suburbia driven by the nearby ski slopes of Niseko, the clients, a large family, wanted a place where they could enjoy a little peace and quiet. “Consequentially, the brief is not for a house but for a time in and with the forest,” say the architects. The roughly seven-acre property is almost completely wooded, cleared only in a narrow area to accommodate the new timber-framed flat-roof structure.

Many vacation homes would prioritize giving the best views to a common space. “House in the Forest” does exactly the opposite. Ten “branches” are capped on each end by a glass wall, each one pointed in a different direction. No window gazes directly on another. Some contain social areas like the kitchen and living room, but many are meant to be private spaces where you can spend time alone or in small groups. The interior design is strikingly, meditatively minimalist, and the exterior wooden cladding harmonizes with the natural setting. The house is also lifted off the ground slightly, giving it a light footprint and allowing firewood to be stored underneath.

Few family vacations give people the chance to be “alone, together,” but “House in the Forest” makes a strong argument for creating more of these contemplative getaways.

“Moving through the house is moving through the forest,” say the architects. “As our views keep changing from far to near, the forest is both distant background and tactile environment. The end of each branch is cut open. The closer we move to the extremes (the end of the branches), the more we are drawn into the forest. While the protection of the inside separates us physically from the experience of the forest, the focus and scale of the windows to the forest intensifies it. We are sitting in the forest. In the house’s central spine, this focus of selection is replaced by a multi-faceted instantaneity. As a multitude of views of the forest around us are filling the space, the original experience inside the forest is always present.”

“The House in the Forest is not about a fixed form but an ever-changing dialogue with the forest. The eventually built is merely the result in a process of probing and responding to the surroundings to create a place where the family can be both together and by themselves, where they can become part of the forest.”

The post Branch-Shaped House in the Forest Enables Solitude at Family Gatherings first appeared on Dornob.