Danielle Lehmann: Looking Out Week 7

  Forty feet above the ground, this conch-shell looking structure high in a redwood tree is "New Zealand's Whimsical Yellow Treehouse Restaurant" only ten meters wide and twelve meters tall. The restaurant seats eighteen people and was designed by the firm called PEL. They were excited to do the project because of its sustainability requirements and the idea of a treehouse was "magical" to them. This intriguing design was built to be sustainable: it was constructed with glulam wood beams which is more renewable resource with less waste and carbon emissions than concrete or steel, plus it blends in with the trees more so than concrete or steel would have.
  This restaurant was a commission by yellow pages to get advertisement - ironically enough. Why ironic? Because of the final paragraph in the article which points out that: "every year in the United States alone 500 million directories are printed—enough for nearly 2 books for every person in the country—that’s 9 million trees harvested, 1.6 billion pounds of paper consumed, 7.2 million barrels of oil spent in processing, and so on. The E.P.A. estimates that directories account for up to 5% of total landfill waste. Should this make a difference to an architect? We think it should." With this point in mind and as we move through architecture school it's something to question. Should architects participate in buildings which are promoting something with a negative effect on the environment? The restaurant in beautiful and sends its own message, but may not be so effective when one realizes who sponsored it.