If You Can Dream It, This Tiny Tree House Maker Can Probably Build It

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There are tree houses and then there are ones by O2 Treehouse. Founded by Dustin Feider in 2006, the Oakland company merges his love of design and nature in a way that radically departs from any of the 2x4 forts you might have grown up with. The company’s portfolio includes a geodesic pine cone, a suspended climbing pod built using woven nets, and a faceted sphere structure with a tree growing through its center, crafted for The Doors guitarist Robby Krieger.

The company recently worked with a family in Northern California to complete its newest design: a fantastical elven-inspired tree house appropriately dubbed Rivendllë, a reference to J.R.R Tolkien’s mythical valley in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. The 101-square-foot build features curved rafters, redwood siding, and a cedar-shingled roof that coalesce as a storybook-inspired backyard hideout.

Here, Feider delves into how the company dreams up their projects—and what it takes to pull them off.

What qualities make your tiny homes stand apart from the rest?

O2 Treehouse creates one-of-a-kind structures that connect people to the natural world and facilitate wonder for all ages. We pride ourselves on a collaborative process where we take a client’s budget and functional and aesthetic desires and find something that fits their aims. We like creating complicated forms that are still within code.

What’s the most exciting project you’ve realized to date?

The Pinecone was a landmark, but it’s since been surpassed by the Cloud Ripple project. The clients came to me with an old tree house they wanted to remove. They had previously hosted a dinner on construction scaffolding, which they loved so much they decided to build a tree house they could use as a dining deck. After exploring the site, we saw the capacity for something grander and integrated a kids’ play structure. The result was a primary structure with an almost boat-like form, encompassed by a wrapping facade that creates an understory play area.

The Cloud Ripple structure includes multi-story netting with a flowing organic shape that extends from the underside of the ship-like central deck, featuring offset oculi that allows kids to climb between levels and access the different tree houses. We designed the netting with a gradient color palette of blues and purples that resemble the fruiting body of basket fungi.

The project’s size allowed us to create a whole series of interconnected structures with rope bridges. I made a geodesic structure with all glass instead of plexiglass. It developed a mushroom-growth theme that evolved throughout the design, which resulted in a flowing and bubbly shape that encompasses four redwood trees. It features a spiral staircase for access, and the railing fall protection mimics turkey tail mushrooms that naturally grow off redwood trees.