Is this a 'tree tent' or a Christmas bauble?
When Jason Thawley was growing up in the Lincolnshire countryside, he didn’t have a treehouse. But he would have really liked one. ‘It’s probably,’ he says, ‘why I do what I do now.’In 2016, the 50-year-old founded Tree Tents, a British company that builds spherical treehouses. Today, there are more than 20 of these orbs around the world and now Thawley’s creations are featured in a new book: Modern Treehouses by Florian Siebeck. The book is a celebration of arboreal structures: a glass treehouse in Norway; a wooden treehouse built on top of a volcano in Japan; a three-storey treehouse in Indonesia.But Thawley’s spheres are special. The structures, weighing around 250kg, are made using recycled aluminium and sustainable plywood, lined with fleece cladding and covered in an ultra-waterproof canvas. They’re suspended – using steel wires – between several trees and you access them via ladder. Inside, ‘it’s a bit Tardis-like’: each tree tent measures three metres wide and three metres tall. There’s space for a double and single bed, desk, and log burner. (The latter has a chimney that pops out of the tent’s side.)You can stay in the one pictured here, part of the Nasets Marcusgard campsite in Sweden, for around £240 a night. In winter it gets to minus 20C – but, says Thawley, that fleecy insulation and burner mean ‘you could be in shorts and a T-shirt’. Unlike most treehouses – which are built solidly around a tree – the tents move slightly in the wind. ‘It’s a feeling of very low turbulence,’ says Thawley. ‘It’s the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had.’Modern Treehouses is published by Taschen, £50
Share or comment on this article:
Is this a 'tree tent' or a Christmas bauble?
