Well, I am caught no more!
A Wisconsin architect has been building stunningly beautiful houses out of whole trees. While he does still kill some trees, he uses smaller trees than are conventionally logged, opening up spaces in the forest for understory plants to flourish, and he also uses a lot of deadfall wood. The whole trees are stronger than cut lumber as well as cheaper to use (no sawmill required!). As a bonus, by not cutting into the tree, the carbon sequestered in the wood is kept in, instead of released by the lumbering process.In the end, of course, you also get a home that is not only beautiful, but unique, strong, and full of character and natural grace, as well as the knowledge that you have used a process that is better for the forest, better for the atmosphere, and better for you. This kind of innovative thinking and creative engineering is what is going to change us for the better and it's what we need a lot more of!
6 comments:
and enormously expensive.
Wow! That would be fabulous. My parrots would love it.
Actually construction costs are low, about $100 per square foot.
*gasp* Pretty! Sign me up. :-)
I didn't even have a treehouse as a child, only a GIANT hole that my bro and I dug in the backyard in the hopes that our parents would make it into a hot-tub. When they didn't go for that, we turned it into a fort.
Mental image of Frizz in a giant hole in the yard = priceless. ROFLMAO!
Lol, we were total little Wilderness Children -- we lived in upstate Massachussettes, surrounded by forests and rivers and boulders. I had poison ivy every year. Oh, and that hole ROCKED! Well, actually, I'm still kinda bitter that the 'rents wouldn't turn it into a hot-tub, but it was a really cool fort.