Tree Houses and Love Shacks

Ahadu Abaineh's ideology is to alleviate the housing crises endemic in Ethiopia and other developing countries as well as encourage re-forestation. His idea of making a building out of living trees and using appropriate technology to construct it impressed members of the jury of the AR+D Awards of 2003.

The Architectural Review says"... Ahadu Abaineh proposes to ameliorate the problem by growing trees, He suggests that trees will both greatly improve the urban ecological balance and form the structure of houses that can reduce consumption of expensive and environmentally destructive manufactured products. His proposal is simple: use growing trees to make the basic load-bearing structure of a house (basically one tree at each corner), create a frame out of untreated poles, then create walls out of a flexible and easily altered material like mud, used in traditional fashion. The only factory-made material needed extensively is the corrugated metal of the roof, which protects the fragile walls and channels rain to water the trees. The structure took six weeks to erect..."

Australian company Smartshax seems to have also been inspired by similar concepts in Aboriginal architecture and have come out with the "Love Shack" as reported in Inhabitat