OUTDOORSY
the WOOD issue
the pros and cons of types of wood
April 2015
takashi kobayashi self-taught treehouse expert
takashi kobayashi the self-taught treehouse expert of Japan
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The tree houses of Kobayashi convey a simple message: the harmonious combination of man and nature in an unusual way to discover here. SATOKO KAWASAKI
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akashi Kobayashi is a self-taught designer that has brought treehouse vernacular to the Japanese landscape. The carpenter and architect of 120 houses throughout Japan, his prolificness is borne of a deep-seated investment in the creation of a new architectural tradition in his country added to the hefty, overall aim of each project, to erode the boundary between man and nature. Using reclaimed wood, the designer and his collective Treehouse People have developed methods since the first building in 1993 for the arboreal structures balanced on living boughs and limbs that avoid stunting the growth of the tree.
ERIKO ARITA
takashi kobayashi
Swipe for next image. Many of Kobayashi’s treehouses are built with materials that have been salvaged around the host site Kobayashi takes many details into account, and often improvises while building. SATOKO KAWASAKI
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magine strolling through a forest and coming across a hut supported by four trees 8 meters off the ground. With its triangular roof, stained-glass door panels and timber decking, at first sight it’s like something in a fairyland. This is, however, the latest lofty abode built by Takashi Kobayashi, Japan’s pioneer tree-house creator. Completed on June 20, the hut in a valley in Takikawa, Hokkaido, is the fruit of cooperation between Kobayashi and Solaputi Kids Camp, an organization that runs a camping facility there for children with life-threatening diseases. “There are children who have never played outdoors because they have to stay in hospital or wear breathing or other medical tubes.
This tree house is for such children,” Kobayashi said in a recent interview with The Japan Times. He explained that the hut is spacious enough for kids in wheelchairs or on stretchers along with medical staff from the organization — and that it is accessible horizontally via a bridge. “I hope the children enjoy the view from up in the trees and the way the suspension bridge swings, too,” Kobayashi enthused with a childlike glint in his eye. He also explained that the idea for the tree house came from the founder of the camping organization, Ryota Hosoya, who is also a vice director and pediatrician at St. Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo.
takashi kobayashi “Dr. Hosoya told me that the children’s parents, and the medical staff involved, tend to be very serious,” the 54-year-old said. “But he stressed that people need to consider the element of play for the children and he said he’d like me to work with him for the kids.” After scouting around in 2010, Kobayashi found a suitable site with four adjacent Japanese poplar trees for support, and the following year he began putting together the base of the house. Then, this spring, construction began in earnest, with the house designed to ensure it would bear the weight of Hokkaido’s heavy annual snowfalls — and with a wood-burning stove installed for warmth. “And in June it was finally done and is set to be officially
Takashi Kobayashi, Japan’s pioneer tree-house maker, with one of his constructions at Mount Takao, Tokyo. SATOKO KAWASAKI
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Japan is very green country - nearly 67% of the territory is covered by forests. A lesser known fact is that almost 40% of these forests are planted forests. Pictured is the Nasu Tea Treehouse, built for Niki Club in 2011. SATOKO KAWASAK.
takashi kobayashi
“people Our job is to excite and re-ignite
their interest in nature. In the long term, this will serve to focus more attention on the forests themselves.
Right: Kobayashi constructed this quirky structure for Solaputi Kids Camp in 2012, an organization that runs camps for kids with life-threatening illnesses. Equipped with a wheelchair accessible bridge and expansive interior. SATOKO KAWASAKI Swipe for next image.
This is a treehouse constructed lt in Hioki, Kagoshima, for the client NPO Fukumatsu, in 2009. Built around a Japanese hackberry, the treehouse itself is part of an “adventure playground for regional improvement.” SATOKO KAWASAKI
opened in August,” said self-taught Kobayashi, a native of Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture, who is neither a trained architect nor carpenter, though he has been building tree houses since he was 34. “In my childhood,” he explained, “I loved watching TV travel and nature documentaries, and I wanted to do insect reaearch in the Amazon. But I wasn’t good at science so I studied TV broadcasting at university.” That led to a job producing TV programs, but Kobayashi soon found it didn’t suit him, so he quit and started traveling in Asia, Africa and Europe for sev-
eral months at a time. Through his travels, Kobayashi had become good at speaking English, and when some used-clothes dealers at the flea markets realized this, they commissioned him to go and buy clothes in the United States for them to sell in Tokyo. Around the same time, Kobayashi often visited an antique shop in Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku district, where he found an enamel sign showing a hut in a pine tree. Because he loved the sign, the shop owner gave it to him — and also suggested that he open a used-clothes store in a vacant premises next to hers. So he did.