'Good is...?' - Treehouses

To define:


Tree houses, treehouses, or tree forts, are platforms or buildings constructed around, next to or among the trunk or branches of one or more mature trees while above ground level. Tree houses can be used for recreation, work space, habitation, observation or as temporary retreats.


Practical uses:

In some parts of the tropics, houses are either fastened to trees or elevated on stilts to keep the living quarters above the ground to protect occupants and stored food from scavenging animals. The Korowai, a Papuan tribe in the southeast of Irian Jaya, live in tree houses, some nearly 40 metres (130 ft) high, as protection against a tribe of neighbouring head-hunters, the Citak.

Tree houses are an option for building eco-friendly houses in remote forest areas, because they do not require a clearing of a certain area of forest. The wildlife, climate and illumination on ground level in areas of dense close-canopy forest is not well suited for human habitation.

Materials:

Tree houses can be built with a wide range of materials. Wood is commonly used for structural parts and cladding due to its strength, light weight and low cost. Steel is used for brackets, cables and bolts, including specialized tree bolts capable of supporting up to 6,000 pounds (2,700 kg).Builders of tree houses sometimes use recycled materials or parts, such as reclaimed window frames, doors and used lumber. One motivation for this is to promote sustainability by re-using resources. Reclaiming materials can also save money compared with buying new materials and can add a retro or abstract style to the design of the structure. Fabrics can be used to produce non-rigid temporary structures that are more like tree tents than tree houses.


Support methods

• Stilts

Tree houses supported by stilts do not need the tree to take any of the weight stress of the building materials and potential strain and injury cased by puncture holes. Stilts are typically anchored into the ground with concrete although new designs, such as the “Diamond Pier”, accelerates installation time and protects sensitive root systems. Stilts are the easiest method of supporting larger tree houses, and can increase structural support and safety. Adding stilts to tree houses built with other methods of support is an option to increase stability and safety.

• Friction and tension fasteners

Friction and tension fasteners are the most common method of securing tree houses. These include nails, screws and bolts. Because this method requires punctures in the tree, the fewest possible number of these should be utilized to minimize stress.Nails are generally not recommended to attach a tree house to a tree. A development called the treehouse attachment bolt which can support greater weights than earlier methods, is now commonly used by many tree house companies worldwide.

• Suspended connections

Tree houses that use this design are among the least cluttered and unique types today. Rope and cable are the most used methods of suspension. Suspended tree houses are among the most difficult to construct and access. There are sefty in forest of animal.

Words relating to 'Tree house':

- Canopy

- Stilts

- Tree

- Natural

- Rope

- Suspended

- Secure

- Living

- Protection

- Forest

Alnwick tree house

Looking at the images, its clear its a complex set out, with several elements to it. It's not simply one building, but several, creating a range of rooms with several entrances for tourists. This made me think it is in need of signs and guides helping visitors make the most from their visit, by being able to find everything they came to see. 

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The worlds biggest tree house:

Located in Crossville, Tennessee, the Minister’s House took Horace Burgess 14 years to build around an 80-foot-tall white oak tree, with a diameter of 12 feet. The wooden edifice itself is 97-feet-tall and it’s supported by six other strong trees that act like natural pillars.
Burgess says he started working on this giant treehouse after he had a vision back in 1993. God spoke to him and said: “If you build me a
treehouse, I’ll see you never run out of material.” And so he spent the next 14 years building God’s treehouse, using only salvaged materials, like pieces of lumber from garages, storage sheds and barns. So, as far as Horace is concerned, God did provide him with all the materials he needed.
Although he never bothered to measure Minister’s House (he estimates it must be about 8,000 to 10,000 square feet), he did count the nails he had to hammer into it, 258,000. It cost the 56-year-old landscape architect around $12,000 to construct the world’s biggest treehouse.
400-500 people visit Minister’s House every week, most of them tourists from out of state who heard about a 10-story-treehouse somewhere in Tennessee.

An absolutely huge tree house, the biggest in the world, and of course, it's in America.

Although tree houses have a practical use, aesthetically they can be beautiful, and architecturally amazing, this can be seen in the close attention to detail.

Although the house looks like its supported by the ground, it's supported entirely by just 6 trees.

A maze in my eyes.

A shot showing the sheer size and height of the structure.