The Baron in the Trees

Inspired by Italo Calvino’s “The Baron in the Trees”, this project calls for the return of the contemporary citizen to the rural by sharing habitats with an arboreal flora and fauna. The technical ambition for the building is to take the form of a tree house. It consists of a nursery in Epping. This nursery turns into a retreat i.e., a holiday location over the weekend and during holidays.

The reasons for this hybrid approach are environmental and economic. An architecture in which the programme of individual spaces changes maximises usage, which adheres to a “build only what you need” approach. The revenues from the forest retreat are used to maintain and partially fund the nursery. The main construction material is reused timber. Rather than reusing waste from man-made construction, nature’s remainders are to be used, this avoids the legitimisation of conventional construction and its disastrous consequences.