Builders and designers are not all created equally. Some raze forests and city lots to put up cookie-cutter McMansions. Others painstakingly plan their buildings to connect with the natural world around them.
Builder and designer Tom Chudleigh, from Free Spirit Spheres Inc., works with the natural world to create his tree spheres. He explains that the objective of the Free Spirit Sphere Project was to be able to move into the rainforest and have an experience of it – with as little impact as possible. To celebrate the beauty and energy that is already there, without changing anything. Architecturally, the project theme is unity and connectedness.
The spheres use the trees for a foundation, eliminating any building footprint on the ground. The web of rope that connects the spheres to the forest mirrors the connectivity to the eco system we live in, explains Chudleigh. The web of rope, with many soft attachments to the trees, also secures the spheres aloft. Each sphere is tethered to at least three trees.
The ropes are stretchy and the main support comes from near vertical attachments to the trees. This keeps the load in a column, down the trunks of the trees, enabling them to move unrestricted. It also keeps the sphere relatively steady when the wind blows and the treetops move a lot.
Access is provided via a spiral staircase and a short suspension bridge that leads out to the sphere. The stairway is a helix, which is also suspended from the tree. Nothing penetrates the trees.
A sphere can be placed in a forest setting in three or four days and completely removed in just a day, explains Chudleigh. A crew of three people are normally used to position and rig a sphere.
However, the tree spheres are more than just visually interesting places to sleep. Chudleigh explains that people find the suspended spheres to be healing places. “For some reason it seems to help people heal from, or at least come to terms with, their medical problems or diseases,” he reports. “We’ve been asked hundreds of times why that is and have always struggled to explain it.”
Perhaps it has something to do with changing your mind or at least perception. “By immersing yourself in a suspended sphere you have already changed your mind about so many things it seems easier to carry on changing it about how you see other things as well,” he offers.
Chudleigh has created a mold from his wooden sphere and is now making the spheres out of fibreglass. The fibreglass shells are easily produced and can be painted to fit harmoniously into a grove of trees.
Future plans include building twenty spheres and hanging them all in an old growth forest setting for a retreat center. “A place where people can come and commune with nature and experience sacred space,” he explains.
Visit: www.freespiritspheres.com
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