Treehouse Hotel

"Ephemeral Productions" is the theme of last issue of the magazine arq|a #77. In fact, the question of the ephemeral in architecture gained new relevance in recent years, including a great diversity of design approaches: projects that respond to typologies of performative nature, proposals that meet a provisional constructive condition, buildings that seek to materialize the idea of transitoriness, temporary critical interventions in public space or prototypes of humanitarian response to contexts and situations of emergency.
The project Treehouse Hotel of the young Portuguese practice dass seems quite interesting as a research on the theme of the ephemeral and its connections to a specific place and the city in general. dass is an emergent office led by the architect David Seabra and the designer Susan Roeseler which has already developed some interesting work around the idea of architectural performativity. In the project of the Treehouse Hotel, a small transportable habitational module, dass propose a wider reflection on the sustainability of housing in the contemporary metropolis: "The statistics are clear, half of the 6.5 billion people that populate our planet, live in cities and the urban population is growing 1 million per week. How can be possible to build a sustainable city of one million people each week?

The Treehouse Hotel questions the universal processes of creating architecture and urban environment and setting out these issues to the universal values of human life: happiness, tolerance, sustainability, forcing the visitors to think, free of constraints (social, economic or political) on the evolution of urban life into a natural ecological environment. The Treehouse Hotel is an experimental project of architecture and design that addresses essential topics to the future of our society. The theme of the sustainable city has become so important that is present in all the disciplines involved in the urbanization process (architects, designers, planners, theorists, sociologists, landscape, biologists ...)

A sustainable city seeks from the beginning a reading of the footprint of the city, in the present and the future, in order to make it neutral in all respects: energy, carbon emissions, food, tradition, employment, housing, moving , waste, diversity, nature...". The first materialization of the Treehouse Hotel was in Jardim da Estrela as one tangential project of the Biennale ExperimentaDesign 2009 in Lisbon.

The motto of this year's Biennale was significantly «It's about Time». Beyond its wider conceptual justification, that included issues of sustainability, technology and social response, it was the simplicity of the challenge proposed by the Treehouse Hotel that caught the interest of the public. First, the attention to the specific context where it was placed, a romantic Garden in the center of Lisbon: "In Lisbon there are several natural environments which have survived years of occupation and disorganized economic interests. Of all, the Jardim da Estrela is a space that fits perfectly to this event, the cozy scale, the central position, the existing infrastructure and it is like a small oasis within the city of Lisbon." Second, the nature of the typology and its meaningful and metaphorical field, a wooden treehouse as a place of escape and belonging: "A tree house is a magical place, a romantic hideaway in the nature. Micro spaces that are placed between the trees to play, work, relax or dream! Here we come with memories, new thoughts and through our imagination we achive to be observers of the world we live in, and be critical that allows us to reach new levels of discovery and understanding." But, finally, it was the program set for the time of the biennale that really makes Treehouse Hotel a truly successful project. It offers not merely a contemplating object, but an ephemeral living experience. Inviting by appointment people to stay one night in the house during the event, dass uses architecture as pretext for exploring and discovering a singular place, and allowing a reconnection with nature in the core of the city. As they say, "the inspiration of this Micro hotel is not architecture, but nature itself."

The Treehouse Hotel is literally a living capsule built in wood, with a strong formal image. It freely resembles an abstract space-ship with its oblique planes in an overall triangular tridimensional shape. Its interior space is unified as living room and bedroom with the inherent infra-structure. The envelope is then opened with individual windows that propose specific points of view to the surrounding garden strongly related to the corporal appropriation of the interior space. With Treehouse Hotel, dass present us an idea of living the contemporary city. Instead of a mere sequence of daily routines, urban life can also be composed of a series of peculiar moments of discovery that breaks the visual and perceptual blindness of repetition. In fact, strangeness and unpredictability can be another way of revitalizing our experience of the city, proposing new ways of seeing and feeling what one arrogantly thinks to know already. In this sense, Treehouse Hotel is truly a machine for intensifying urban life: "Rather than creating an exhibition or a seminar, the Treehouse Hotel offers the opportunity to create something beautiful, not only formal but to achieve the perfect combination between form and function, between man and his context, emphasizing the ephemeral character of Life, Nature and the City. The simplicity of the idea of creating a Treehouse that can be rent and lived becomes a message that in the event of the temporary Experimenta Design09 in Lisbon can become eternal."

Luís Santiago Baptista