Redolent of childhood adventures and fun, the treehouse has been reinvented as a 21st-century retreat

Reminiscent of childhood adventures and castaway dreams, the treehouse has been reinvented as an adult playground.

Reminiscent of childhood adventures and castaway dreams, the treehouse has been reinvented as an adult playground.

In Winnie the Pooh, Owl lives in a lofty treehouse hidden in the depths of the Hundred Acre Wood. Nestled in the branches of an ancient chestnut tree, his rustic dwelling is widely admired. Pooh considers it “an old-world residence of great charm, which was grander than anybody else’s, or so it seemed to Bear, because it had both a knocker and a bell pull”.


Since A. A. Milne wrote his children’s classic, however, the stakes have risen considerably. The humble treehouse has evolved from kids’ plaything to adult indulgence. Instead of rickety shacks cobbled together from old driftwood and salvaged junk, the new breed is designed by professional architects. Built to bespoke specifications, modern treehouses can accommodate any creature comfort imaginable, from jacuzzis and kitchens to dancefloors and plasma TVs. Merely having a knocker and bell pull can no longer guarantee wistful glances from impressionable bears.


Alnwick Castle in the north of England offers the ultimate example of arboreal extravagance. The Duchess of Northumberland commissioned a gigantic treehouse for the castle grounds as a fantasy playground for visiting children. The price tag: £3.3 million ($6.8 million). More than 10,000 nails and 280 tonnes of timber later, the results are palatial. Sitting 18 metres off the ground and supported by 16 mature lime trees, the treehouse is the size of two Olympic swimming pools. Several turreted cottages are linked by suspended walkways in a complex that includes a 120-seat restaurant.


The project was the concept of John Harris, a treehouse designer and author of three books on the subject. Based in Scotland, Harris built his first treehouse in 1997 to wean his children off computer games. “I built a small treehouse for them in our garden and decided to place an advert in a homes magazine to see what kind of response I would get,” the former furniture designer says. “I was only going to build treehouses as a pastime, but when I received 300 replies I realised there was real demand for this product and I could capitalise on a very niche market.”


Since then, Harris has built hundreds of treehouses from Switzerland to the Caribbean. While Alnwick Castle sits at the top of the range, even a modest design can cost $100,000. Despite the prohibitive price, demand is growing.


The treehouse’s new luxury status is reflected by the growing number of celebrity endorsements. Sting enjoys an octagonal design, which has stained-glass windows that overlook the lake at his Tuscan summer house. The Beckhams shelled out $50,000 for a treehouse for their sons, while John Malkovich co-designed a nest-like retreat in a walnut tree at his home in Provence. Mick Jagger, Donna Karan, Michael Parkinson and Val Kilmer are some of the other famous faces who’ve splashed out to enjoy life on a limb.


As perceptions of treehouses have shifted, the designs have also developed. Baumraum, a German architectural practice specialising in treehouse design, rejects the sort of sylvan cliches that might have escaped from a fairytale illustration. “We try to do modern architecture in the trees,” explains Andreas Wenning, who started the company in 2003 after a stint working in Sydney. “Our aesthetic is based on clearly defined shapes. We use openings and perspectives, which bring a strong dialogue with the trees and surrounding elements.”


The results are sleek and sophisticated, with prices starting at $50,000. The streamlined cabins resemble elongated boxes or pod-like capsules with clean lines and oblique angles. Wood is the primary material but Wenning also uses plastic and steel in designs that can span 30sqm.


Wenning’s six-strong team includes a landscape architect and an arborist, employed to prevent any damage to the tree. The company has quickly won an international clientele and business is growing. “The commercial part is increasing,” Wenning says. “People see the value in being close to nature and a treehouse gives us a sense of adventure, which is exciting.”


Treehouse design also throws up exciting possibilities for architects. Frank Lloyd Wright coined his philosophy of “organic architecture” in 1939 to promote designs that integrate with their natural surroundings. Treehouses offer the ultimate expression of this concept as building in a living tree demands a symbiotic relationship between site and form. The fact that existing vegetation doesn’t have to be cleared before construction enables a treehouse to merge seamlessly with the landscape. These environmentally friendly attributes coincide with the renewed emphasis on sustainable design.


“That’s just the way you design buildings these days,” explains Melbourne architect Andrew Maynard. “Now that we’ve screwed up the Earth, it’s our responsibility to incorporate sustainability into the way we design buildings. Hopefully, our designs are green, because that’s good design.” Maynard has experimented with treehouse design, dreaming up a concept for a modernist, two-storey structure that spreads its weight by attaching itself to three trees. “Treehouses resonate with architects who for centuries have been trying to explore this romantic idea of hanging objects in space,” he says. “There’s something wonderful about engaging with something as natural as a tree.”


Man’s compulsion for hammering away amid the treetops is nothing new. It’s almost as if some regressive kernel of our brains still hankers for the days when our simian ancestors swung from bough to bough. Whether designed as novelty indulgence or genuine shelter, treehouses have enthralled generations throughout history.


Alongside his penchant for sexual perversity and megalomania, Caligula was an early treehouse fan. Pliny the Elder records how the Roman emperor ordered the construction of a dining room big enough to seat 15 people in a plane tree on his estate in Velitrae. The treehouse was reportedly the venue for epic banquets, complete with jugglers and acrobats.


During the Renaissance, the Medici family commissioned treehouses of staggering opulence in the gardens of their villas near Florence. The most famous of these incorporated two staircases that wound around the trunk of an enormous oak. A set of stairs led to a balustraded platform with a working fountain, plus seats to admire the view. The Medici treehouses became popular tourist attractions and set an aristocratic trend among European stately homes in the 16th and 17th centuries.


But treehouses are not an exclusively European phenomenon. Captain Cook reported evidence of indigenous people living in trees when he travelled to Bruny Island in Tasmania. Writing in his journals in 1777, Cook described the “hovels built of sticks and covered with bark” that he discovered around the head of Adventure Bay. “We also saw evident signs of them sometimes taking up their abode in the trunks of large trees, which had been hollowed out by fire most probably for this very purpose.”


Yet the main reason treehouses loom so large in the collective consciousness owes less to history than popular culture. Johann Rudolf Wyss published The Swiss Family Robinson in 1812 and catapulted treehouses into the mainstream. The novel revolved around a family marooned on a desert island. Sustained by Christian values and robust powers of self-reliance, the Robinsons made their home in an elaborate treehouse. Wyss’ utopian romance became an international bestseller and even inspired the creation of Swiss Family Treehouse attractions at Walt Disney theme parks around the world.


Since then, the structures have popped into a number of cross-cultural blockbusters. The tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs further aligned treehouses with the notion of a primitive yet virtuous lifestyle. In The Lord of the Rings, the elfin city of the Galadhrim is built amid the towering Mallorn trees. More recently, Bart Simpson regularly visits his treehouse, where he can get away from and ponder his chaotic family.


The connotations of these fictional icons have quietly trickled into the public imagination. Treehouses have become infused with the magic of childhood fantasies and the promise of faraway adventure. Physically distanced from the earth below, they offer a refuge cocooned from the pressures of modern life.
Given these characteristics, it’s not surprising that treehouses have emerged as a novelty form of boutique hotel. From jungle shacks in Kerala to luxury safari huts among the fig trees of Botswana, treehouse hotels offer the ultimate in escapism.


Surrounded by 40ha of tropical rainforest, Fur ’n’ Feathers is a treehouse eco-resort in the Cairns Highlands of Queensland. The luxury accommodation consists of six pole-treehouses kitted out with everything from log fires to spa baths. But for all the mod cons, a central part of the resort’s allure is our perception of the treehouse as exotic hideaway. “It’s about being able to put yourself on a different plane and within a different world,” says manager David Gibson. “The main ingredient is just to allow guests to enjoy the tranquillity.”


Having worked in luxury hospitality for 30 years, Gibson was surprised by what he describes as the sheer “wow factor” of treehouses on the guests. “You’re perched high above the ground and completely surrounded by rainforest,” he says. “Plus I suppose there’s always a flashback to the kiddie thing – everyone knew someone with a treehouse when they were a kid and this is possibly a bit of a throwback to that.”


Fur ’n’ Feathers prides itself on keeping things green and clean. The experience is geared towards the rainforest’s natural wonders, including resident cassowaries, tree kangaroos, platypus and brushtail possums. Gibson suggests that treehouse hotels invariably follow an ecological agenda. These green credentials flow from a history of direct action. Treehouses aren’t just about romantic getaways and innovative design. They’ve also proved an effective weapon for activists in the war against deforestation. In the late 1990s, Julia “Butterfly” Hill spent 738 days up a colossal redwood in California. Living in a primitive treehouse, Hill made her defiant stand in order to save an area of the forest from loggers. In the process, she became an environmental icon – a movie on her life begins filming next year – and the Butterfly effect has inspired many since.


In 2003, Greenpeace campaigners erected a 65m-high treehouse to protect old-growth forest in Tasmania’s Styx Valley. As a result of the five-month tree-sit, the federal government eventually agreed to spare 170,000ha of forest. Jerome Keightley, a forest activist from Western Australia, has immersed himself in several treehouse campaigns. In 2004, he became involved in the long-running crusade to save Ludlow Forest near Busselton. Mineral exporter Cable Sands was intent on clearing 147ha of Tuart forest to extract supplies of titanium dioxide from the earth. “A group of people came in when it looked like the forest was absolutely going to go,” Keightley says. “All diplomatic efforts had been exhausted.”


Keightley had the perfect skills to start monkeying about in the forest. The 36-year-old is a tree pruner by trade and has also taught abseiling. Desperate to prevent the trees from being felled, he and fellow activist Simon Peterffy began experimenting with treehouse designs using whatever they could salvage from tips and roadsides. “Part of the inspiration was Star Wars and the Ewok village,” he admits. “The whole dream of living in a tree among a community.”


Eventually, the pair constructed a basic wooden platform lashed to the branches with nylon rope. This provided the base for steel frames that slotted on top of each other to make a two-storey space with tarpaulin draped over the top for waterproofing. Keightley slept on a platform resting on chains secured between two boughs. “When the wind blew the tree limbs would sway independently. It was like being in a boat,” he says.


The construction of the treehouses helped galvanise a flagging campaign. “It gave the ongoing struggle to save the forest a second wind,” Keightley says. “New people came in and stayed.” Crucially, the treehouses also generated a fresh wave of coverage in the local media. As a result of the campaign, 70 per cent of the forest was saved.


“Initially, the treehouses were built purely on a practical level to have people up in the trees and stop the machines,” Keightley says. “But very quickly I realised the treehouses’ potential for inspiration. The idea of having structures in trees is reminiscent of childhood dreams and fairytales. It attracts people on an inspirational level.”


This endorsement from the militant fringe gives treehouses an edge of radical chic. Indeed, from a marketing perspective, the treehouse is the ideal product for our social climate. The environmental crisis has made ethical retail the new consumer buzzword. Shoppers are more inclined to buy status symbols with a traceable history and some sense of social integrity. Fashion oligarch Tom Ford sums it up: “Luxury isn’t going out of style,” he says. “It just needs to change its style. We need to replace hollow with deep.”


Treehouses tick all the right boxes in this department. They suggest ecological credentials. They encourage reconnection with nature. They evoke the warm, fuzzy glow of childhood nostalgia. In reality, designer treehouses may be an indulgence for the seriously rich, yet they’re still accepted as wholesome symbols of lost innocence.


Moreover, it’s impossible not to get swept along by the enthusiasm of a treehouse fanatic like Keightley. His latest range of treehouses is part of a campaign to save a patch of remnant bushland at College Grove, near Bunbury. But over the years Keightley’s design philosophy has changed. “At first my focus was utility-based,” he says. “Now it’s more positive and joyous.”


The upshot of this is that one of Keightley’s treehouses is equipped with a trampoline. Positioned in a jarrah tree, the trampoline is suspended 10m off the ground. Keightley talks of bouncing up and down enveloped by lush greenery, the branches gently creaking, the forest stretching out at his feet. The overwhelming sensation, he says, is one of liberation. “When I’m up there in the branches bouncing away, I feel like I can achieve whatever I dream of.”
www.baumraum.de (Andreas Wenning)
www.rainforesttreehouses.com.au (Fur ’n’ Feathers)