Marvel at These Awesome Treehouses that Hopefully Won't Be Cut Down

When I was in elementary school, my dad and I built a treehouse in the medium-sized oak growing on the hill behind our driveway. Admittedly, it wasn't so much of a tree house as a tree platform, and I didn't so much "build" it with my dad as I did hand him tools occasionally and shout encouraging things about how this was taking way longer than I thought and would he mind if I went and watched Pee-wee's Playhouse until he was finished. From the perspective of a Spy Tech-obsessed seven year old, however, it was still pretty dope.

Not unexpectedly, I was rather bummed out when the eventual addition of a garage to the side of the house necessitated the destruction of my alpine alcazar. As a result, to this day I can't help but cringe when reading stories like this one from Yahoo! News announcing the Army Corps of Engineers' plans to tear down Tremain Albright of Bonners Fairy, Idaho's $14,000 treehouse.

Rather than turn this into a useless rant on big government and make a joke about where the Ents -in-law will sleep next time they're in town, I've decided to look on the bright side by compiling a brief compendium of baller bark-based buildings from around the world, starting stateside with:

Named for the tall pines that characterize its site on the Chesapeake Bay, this 2,200 square-foot single family residence was designed by renowned architectural firm Kieran Timberlake. According to their website, "The house is composed entirely of off-site fabricated elements and ready-made components, assembled from the platform up in less than six weeks." It also features a variety of energy-saving design components, from the green roof to natural ventilation through a breathable facade that allows maximum passive heating and cooling. Not only that, but upon "expiration," the building can be efficiently disassembled and most of its pieces recycled instead of ending up in landfills where they might molder for centuries.

Below, a video of the construction process from both philosophical and practical viewpoints:

If permanent residency isn't your aim, then you'll be happy to see that our next site barely has room for your soul, let alone your whole family:

At least 800 years old, the tree in which "Chapel Oak" is built is quite possibly the oldest in France. The shrine itself, however, is approximately half that age, with construction taking place in the late 17th century after a fortuitous lightning strike started a controlled fire that managed to hollow out the inside of the tree without consuming the rest of it. Local residents use it as a place of worship to this day, and it is also the destination of an annual pilgrimage on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin every August 15.

From eternal salvation to tropical recreation, we come to:

Located on the country's southern Caribbean coast in the heart of the Gandoca-Manzanillo wildlife refuge, The Tree House—one of four fairy tale flats—is built entirely out of sustainable woods harvested from fallen trees. It rests on tall stilts and features a sloped wooden suspension bridge leading to its front door. Inside you'll find two bedrooms (upstairs: master suite with king size bed, sleeping couch, and bathroom; downstairs: one queen plus a twin), a full kitchen with lounge, and a jacuzzi-laden deck/BBQ area. A second bathroom literally encircles a 100-year-old Sangrillo tree, which shelters a toilet in one trunk fold and an outdoor shower in another.

But why settle for a single treetop retreat (re-tree-t? groan) when you can inhabit a whole village full of them at the:

Claiming to have the world’s largest concentration of treehouses, builder Michael Garnier says he founded the "treesort" in an effort to make a living off Oregon's number one natural resource—trees—without cutting them down. The result is a living metropolis of treehouses accessible to guests by a series of ladders, catwalks, and spiral staircases.

If all that sapling socializing is sapping your enthusiasm, however, you may prefer the downright isolated attractions of:

Ensconced in the redwood forest 45 minutes north of Aukland, Redwoods Treehouse (originally dubbed the "Yellow Treehouse Restaurant," since it was commissioned by the Yellow Pages as part of a large-scale marketing effort to promote their services) is now a one-of-a-kind dining destination for corporate functions and private events. The pod itself holds up to 30 guests and is accessible via an elevated tree-top walkway, which was built using redwood milled on site. A dedicated 32-seat coach is also available for transportation (and, indeed, is required to be so) given the site's unique location.

Finally, if you prefer the motherland to her colonies, there's always:

Built from sustainably sourced Canadian cedar, Scandinavian redwood, and English and Scots pine (which, I might add, all get along perfectly well), this impressive edifice sits in a pocket of mature lime trees and is surrounded by a series of wobbly rope bridges and sturdier "walkways in the sky." At the heart of the treehouse is even a restaurant featuring "a roaring log fire" (which sounds both dangerous and tauntingly cruel, but what do I know?) and trees growing through the floor.

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