Tell someone that a building was built out of wood, and you’re likely to get a blank “so what?” stare right back in your face. After all, a building made of lumber is hardly a new or noteworthy development in the thousands of years of human architectural progress. While lumber construction might not be so eyebrow-raising, living-tree construction is something altogether different.
New Zealander Barry Cox is the arboreal brains behind “Tree Church,” a stunningly beautiful structure created entirely out of living, growing trees. Cox, who owns a tree-planting and relocation business, created the structure from five different types of planted trees, each of which was guided into place using a temporarily constructed iron frame. The result is an expertly constructed, one hundred percent tree-based building that walks a fluid line between shelter from, and reveling in, nature.
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As impressive as the structure itself is the fact that its construction took only four years from start to finish. To accomplish this feat, Cox used a specially built “tree spade” which is able to move and replant entire trees up to six meters tall. He explained to New Zealand Gardener:
“I walked out my back door one day and thought, ‘That space needs a church’ – and so it began. I cleared the area in April 2011 and made the iron frame, drawing on all the research I had done over the years of studying churches. I wanted the roof and the walls to be distinctly different, to highlight the proportions, just like masonry churches.”
Billed as a “welcomed retreat from society,” the Tree Church officially opened this past winter. It seats one hundred at a time, and can be rented out for events, or simply visited by anyone looking to escape the concrete and fluorescent lights of city life by spending a little time with a wholly different kind of roof over their head.
[via bored panda]
