Treehotel

Project Description

Everything is rocking. The trunk is swaying in the wind and our abode is vibrating. The forest is holding us in suspense. We are being held aloft by an ancient treetop! That is the charm of any treehouse, the charm of nature.

Of course this charm is gaining ever wider appeal as human culture develops further. In the meantime the treehouse has mutated into a mass product, based on rustic retro design. Such holiday residences are proliferating everywhere, especially in Western Europe. The forest has become inundated with treehouses.

Britta and Kent Jonsson-Lindvall offer something quite different: They own a forest with wide open views! The sloped location looks over a river valley that emanates from the depths of the Arctic Circle and flows into the Baltic Sea at Lulea, Sweden’s northern-most provincial capital. The local architects were ready to pounce on such a view, and they put forward a whole string of treehouse designs. The only guide-lines were ecological elements that are standard nowadays: They were to be built with wood and run using local resources.

Sandell Sandberg raised a flame red house onto a platform. Mårten and Gustav Cyrén appended the deck of a ship between the tree trunks. Bolle Tham and Martin Videgård suspended a fully mirrored cube from the treetops. The Inredningsgruppen under Bertil Harström weaved branches into a bird’s nest and made a UFO hover next to it!

This resulted in a unique collection. Treehotel runs the treehouse as an avant-garde way of life. It remains to be seen whether it will become mainstream. Lovers of nostalgia will feel quite at home here. Britta’s Pensionat is the base camp for the treehouse, it is the epitome of cosiness and also highly original. It originated during the heyday of swing.

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