Baumraum: Tree-Room

It’s sum­mer­time and all we wanna do is spend lazy days out­side, enjoy­ing the warmth of the sun, amongst the beau­ti­ful sea­sonal flow­ers and fresh green­ery. And once we’ve reached our limit of UV rays, we can’t think of any­thing bet­ter (within the tri-state area) than find­ing refuge under a big, shady tree… and if we’re lucky enough, catch­ing a cool breeze through the leafy branches.

There are some peo­ple on this planet that are a step ahead of us when it comes to tak­ing advan­tage of what Mother Earth has to offer. Baumraum or ‘tree-room’ is a German based stu­dio that spe­cial­izes in sus­tain­able, liv­able, amaz­ingly sturdy tree houses. The firm con­sists of archi­tects, land­scape design­ers, tree experts and crafts­men who make each client’s ulti­mate child­hood dream a real­ity. We mean really, can you imag­ine how much fun hav­ing your own, func­tion­ing tree house could be? We are giddy think­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ties. Our inner seven-year-old is itch­ing to come out and play.

Each Baumraum project is approached uniquely, tak­ing the client’s wishes and also the tree into con­sid­er­a­tion. One of the firm’s major objec­tives in their designs is ensur­ing the pro­tec­tion and preser­va­tion of the trees where they build these liv­able dwellings. It is ensured that no dam­age is done to the trees cho­sen for the project.

The struc­tures are typ­i­cally built off-site and are then put together in the tree, held up by cables, tex­tile belts, and the nat­ural stur­di­ness of the tree. Each project is dif­fer­ent, but some of the tree houses they’ve build fea­ture kitchens, heat­ing, insu­la­tion, bed­rooms, sound sys­tems, glass win­dows, light­ing, stor­age spaces, and plumbing.

The Baumraum group doesn’t pre­fer any one wood in par­tic­u­lar, they use dif­fer­ent types depend­ing on the project and the cho­sen tree where the home will be built. Each cre­ation is designed in a way to embrace and enhance the envi­ron­ment it is built into. The struc­tures have many win­dows and out­door seat­ing, so you can have as much inter­ac­tion with the tree as pos­si­ble. Some sig­na­ture design fea­tures include sky­lights, curved win­dows, wood pan­el­ing, alu­minum cladding and rail­ings, decks, and built-in seat­ing, beds, and storage.

We’ve got to say, they’ve thought of every­thing. It’s not just a novel idea, it’s an actual func­tion­ing house. In a tree. Maybe we should rethink that house on the lake idea…

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