Tree House

Before considering the poetic inferences of the project dealt with here, reference to another model, seemingly far removed from architectural concerns – the outpost – may help us by analogy to understand the reasons behind some of the design choices made in this case. A military term, an outpost is a position in an advanced but strategic location allowing surveillance, control, and forewarning of untoward activity. Both a defensive post and garrison, it enables monitoring of the surrounding territory and interpretation of any changes. Transposed to architecture, the outpost takes on a broader, more symbolic value: as an advanced position that reconciles protection and openness. An outpost house can therefore be one that pushes into an untamed, unknown world, with the result that its inhabitants become observers but also protagonists of that world. Indeed, the very concept of the house is perhaps the most complex of all. One could say that any place – a forest, a museum, a place of worship – can become a “home” as long as it welcomes and reflects the identity of those who live there, that a home is any space that reflects our own nature, our intimate self; in a word, a space that ennobles man. In its broadest sense, therefore, a home may allude to a dual tendency: on the one hand, empathy with the landscape and thus an appeal to slow down and step outside the frenetic pace of contemporary society; on the other, the desire to alter Nature’s equilibrium to suit our needs.

These are the aspects evoked by the Tree House. Designed by Piraccini+Potente Architettura and sited on a clearing along the river Savio in Cesena, Italy, this private residence is as if suspended between the rural past and a fairy-tale world in which the landscape becomes an integral part of the construction, lending it a strikingly contemplative character.

The house stands in the midst of a huge, all-enveloping, protective “natural...

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