Transcriber: Annet Johnson Reviewer: Anna Sobota
My name is Pete Nelson, and, for the past 30 years,
I have been designing and building grown-up treehouses.
That’s right.
Small, and sometimes not so small,
tree-supported structures for adult humans.
(Laughter)
Okay.
Now, I started this journey as a 25-year-old
when I was struck by a particularly
inspiring kid’s treehouse in the side yard
of a home in our neighborhood,
and it brought me instantly back to my childhood
when I was obsessed with treehouses.
That moment changed the trajectory of my life.
I suddenly wanted to build a grown-up treehouse,
and I did.
And I have been exploring the intersection
between architecture and living trees ever since.
The news I’m here to share with you is that trees are responding
to our methods of attachment
(Laughter)
in a light so favorable,
so wonderfully positive,
that we are now in a time when tree-supported structures
are accepted and they're multiplying.
(Laughter)
We must lead a new generation of designers, builders,
architects, and engineers into the trees
(Laughter)
so they can build more treehouses globally,
so that we might get more people connected to the natural world,
so that we might
have more people that recognize
the beauty of what this world has given us.
Preserve, protect, and expand
these sacred places.
I was introduced to the trees and woods by my dad.
He was a forestry major at Syracuse University,
and, well,
he built a little treehouse for me
in our backyard when I was a kid.
And it was there as a seven-year-old,
I guess about,
that my imagination really started to take flight.
Maybe some of you remember the 1950s movie about the Swiss family, Robinson,
or the old black and white Tarzan movies?
And, of course, some of the new ones too.
Those images of treehouses were seared into my brain, and I was obsessed.
Years later, prompted by my neighbor’s treehouse,
I decided that I wanted to become a master treehouse builder.
I wrote a book in 1994,
“Treehouses: The Art and Craft of Living Out on A Limb.”
(Laughter)
The centerpiece was my first full-blown adult treehouse
nested 33 feet up in an ancient Douglas fir.
It looked like a cedar shingled water tower,
round and beautiful,
in its backdrop of ancient trees.
That book was my bird song,
and I was singing it from the treetops as loud as I knew how.
Not a lot happened,
(Laughter)
until the Internet.
So many people came together from all over the world:
friends, carpenters,
arborists, engineers,
and quite a few people that didn’t have any real building skills,
but just a love for the notion of a simple place up in the tree.
In 1997, we held the first “World Treehouse Conference”
outside of Cave Junction, Oregon,
at Michael Garnier’s new treehouse bed and breakfast.
There might have been 40 of us or so.
Our mission was
to explore the safest way to connect to living trees for all parties.
What we learned, we agreed that we would share
openly,
and it is with that spirit that I would like to share
this open source hardware with you now.
(Grunts)
(Oof)
This is a treehouse attachment bolt.
Now, I brought the biggest one because I wanted to impress you.
(Laughter)
They do come in smaller models.
It’s the culmination of what we learned together.
And it’s essentially an artificial branch
that you can place anywhere you need one.
Beams rest on these,
and, subsequently, support your masterpiece.
Now, as you think about how all of this works together,
you must keep two things in mind:
trees move in the wind,
and trees grow; they get greater in girth.
Now, your platform is going to stay where it is relative to the ground
when you’ve got your tabs in the trees,
but the trees grow at their tips.
They get taller,
and they get fatter as they grow their rings.
Now, wind is a really important factor here.
Trees move like mad when the wind is blowing up high
and move with extraordinary force down in the trunk
and it’s there that we need to keep things flexible.
We perch our beams on the tabs.
We don’t pin them.
Perch, don’t pin.
(Laughter)
Very important.
Now, the math.
We had these tested
at Washington State University.
With the safety factor,
this one bolt can hold a working load
of between 11,000 pounds in a softwood tree,
up to 30,000 pounds in a hardwood tree;
pine versus oak, for example.
Now, when we let those values sink into our heads,
you’ll realize that our beloved trees
can handle just about anything you throw at them.
And how does the tree respond?
The news here could not be better.
(Laughter)
Tabs are absorbed readily by the natural growth of the tree.
The tree simply grows reaction wood around the bolt,
and that connection gets stronger over time.
So,
what is possible?
Well, you name it.
Let’s bring joy.
Let’s bring accessibility.
Let’s bring wonder back to our lives:
libraries, classrooms, community meeting spaces.
Naturally, we’re all going to be drawn into our backyard oases
and that’s fine, but let’s expand into public parks,
schools and universities,
workplaces.
And what about our underserved communities
where surveys have shown trees to be severely lacking?
Let’s plant more trees in those neighborhoods.
(Applause and Cheers)
I am...
Oh, is it time to wrap?
Oh my gosh, I’m going so slow.
(Laughter)
I'm grateful to report that all this work is underway,
but there’s a whole new universe of possibilities out there.
We can create with supreme confidence,
strong viable tree-supported structures,
collaborating with trees rather than cutting what’s left of them.
So, my friends, if this moves you,
please go back to your neighborhoods,
your spheres of influence,
bring up the possibility.
Join this quiet joyful revolution which is happening now.
This is not the only way
to connect people with the natural world.
Far from it, but it is one way,
and I have witnessed countless times
the magic and power that a treehouse provides.
It works.
When we do this, we can bring up
a generation of people who will help preserve
our natural environment.
This is for our children, and they’re watching.
So let’s get cracking.
Spread the news.
There’s an abundance of wonderful work to be done.
To the trees!
(Applause and Cheers)