Thursday, January 31, 2013

Hidden Egg Treehouse by Joel Allen

Is this a trend? Some very cool tree houses are surfacing around the globe.

"IT worker-cum-carpenter, Joel Allen, harbored a dream of creating a house that organically meshed with the environment of his much loved woods around Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. His dream became a reality after finding friends in two fresh new architects who set him on his path of a uniquely egg shaped treehouse, now known as the HemLoft Weekend Cabin.
The ideal location was decided after a months-long quest to find the perfect tree on the perfect spot of land. Without the sum of money required to buy property, Allen took the risk of squatting in the public forest, he recalls “Finding that perfect spot on crown land wasn’t so easy, I had an informal checklist of requirements, the most important ones being that it within a reasonable distance to a road, yet out of sight and out of earshot of human traffic. The other requirement was hard to qualify, but was of prime importance: the shape of the egg would need to suit the environment and be proportionate to the tree. I couldn’t explain exactly what that was but I figured I would know it when I saw it.""



Thursday, January 24, 2013

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Villa D’Este in Tivoli Italy

Constructed between 1550 and 1572, Villa D’Este in Tivoli, Italy, was created as an oasis from the hot confines of the metropolis of Rome.


Wikipedia notes:

“Drawing inspiration (and many statues[2] and much of the marble used for construction) from the nearby Villa Adriana, the palatial retreat of Emperor Hadrian, and reviving Roman techniques of hydraulic engineering to supply water to a sequence of fountains, the cardinal created a fantasy garden. Its architectural elements and water features had an enormous influence on European landscape design.”

It is built on the side of a hill, where a river has been diverted to supply a giant cistern used to feed all of the stone fountains and waterworks. It is a true masterpiece.

It is a fantastic world that captures the imagination, and one can only believe that to visit the garden in the 1500’s would have transported the visitor to another world.



 
 
 
 
 

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

THE SEED: Now Featured on Pinterest!

Check out Pinterest for a fantastic array of garden imagery. It is certainly a random collection of landscape eye candy...