Many of us see an escape to the woods as a chance to reconnect with nature. Surrounding yourself with trees, mountains, fresh air, rivers, and wildlife gives you an opportunity to go back to basics, especially for the city dwellers among us whose pace of life is moving ever more quickly. The allure of mountain cabins and treehouses have long been the stuff of idyllic fantasies for urbanites, and now, a new project by the Calgary-based design firm Studio North aims to give its users the ultimate immersive experience. Their new treehouse is located in the dense forests of British Columbia near the village of Windermere in Western Canada’s Columbia Valley. This mountainous nook is the perfect home for their creation ? a triangular-shaped timber hut perched on an X frame that elevates it off the ground and puts it among the low canopies of the surrounding trees.
The Bird Hut takes the shape of a pointy A-frame, with steep pitches on each side resting on the timber stilts that prop it 2.7 meters above the forest floor. The gable end is clad in red cedar shingles that are almost cartoonish in appearance, like an illustration you’d see in a children?s story book. They lend the hut a whimsical and endearing quality. The shingles have also been custom-cut with several openings to allow birds in, making them of some of the treehouse’s most defining features. These circular openings range in size to accommodate all twelve species of birds in the area, from large pi...