Project: Tree House Module
Project Scope: Architectural Design
Hosts: Young Architects Competitions: YAC
Team: Mohsin Yousufi, Saif Zubair and myself.
What is a treehouse?
Is the treehouse just a child’s fantasy? Is it our portal back to the past? The notion of the treehouse brings about a way for us to escape our mundane lives and into the fantastical realm. The archetype of a treehouse functions as a conduit for our desire to connect with our past, as an individual, and maybe as a species, from a time when humans were more profoundly connected to the natural landscape around them. It serves only to reinforce the possibility of our stepping into the realm of dreams and fantasies. It becomes a space for us to dream, a place where our memories, joy, love, and adventure take over.
The treehouse acts as a nexus for our imagination of childhood and shared past (the castle present on site) and our present (the context) to build an experience that is profoundly unique and appeals to our collective consciousness. By summoning the archetype of a treehouse, a cocooned and cozy space, pitched roofs perched high above the ground enmeshing it with the archetype of the castle, with their gothic spires, winding stairs, and intimately connected spaces, it brings to life the images in our mind to create an experience which is oddly familiar to us yet reminds us of the fantastical context we are in.
Like a dream, the closely nested spaces with their constantly shifting planes, even the one you walk on reflect the transience of the spaces. The sunlight that seeps through the altering openings creates a space in which light and shadows are constantly morphing. The modules through their two distinct forms scattered around the site, extend the reach of the castle beyond its immediate surroundings. The modules become a distorted, morphed, and abstracted reflection of the castles on the site, very much like our dreams and fantasies which become reflections of our reality. The treehouse itself is not permeant, it is ethereal, brought into existence only by your occupation and you’re yearning to escape into the fantastic.
Module 1
Module 2
