To The Earth

In Michael Pollan's second book, A Place of My Own, he talks about two different schools of architecture in the 20th century, and their opposing thoughts on groundedness, foundations: the Le Corbusier school, with their elaborate and light foundations, defying the need, seemingly, for strong attachment to the earth, elevating their designs in Babel delicateness; and the Frank Loyd Wright camp, where pinning, planting and posting the structure into the earth was the key to a design's success.

I've been thinking about these schools in terms of our tree house project. Ours will be on posts of course, rather delicate at 6 by 6, and of course, floating 8' off the ground, but these posts will be pinned with re bar to ledge that's endlessly thick, and our dwellings will be built around the trees, massive, with roots that crack that ledge and spread vastly through the dark earth. Maybe these tree houses are a nice blend of the Le Corbusier and Wright camps.

Above is my father getting the spring docks out. That time of year!

 While the shop was empty we cut and organized every single piece of wood needed to build the next three tree houses, which just makes me want to say "booyeah!". Above are the studs. There's also forty something rafters and forty something joists around the corner.

Every self respecting shop needs a bench dog and a re-purposed set of Ikea drawers