Luxurious and eco-friendly, Blue Forest‘s imaginative and playful tree houses, lodges and educational facilities seem to be designed to bring out every adult’s wide-eyed inner child. Blue Forest has designed many incredible structures that celebrate the warmth, coziness and sustainability of wood, honoring the material itself and of course, its source. Check out these 18 eye-catching, envy-inducing buildings made by the UK-based company.

Amberley Castle

Blue Forest’s best-known treehouse is located on the grounds of the Amberley Castle Country Hotel in Scotland. It’s used as a recreational getaway space for hotel guests, and also as a multi-purpose venue for corporate entertainment, meals, weddings and private parties.

RotatED School Concept

This intriguing concept design is a prefabricated, hand-crafted eco classroom that can be set onto a foundation on any of its six sides for a multitude of purposes including gallery space, nature observation and educational lectures.

Tongole Wilderness Lodge

Located on the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve in Malawi, the Tongole Wilderness Lodge overlooks a river in one of the country’s last ‘truly unspoiled’ wildlife areas. Offered as an eco-friendly place to stay in the region, the open-air lodge was built from local materials including clay, rock, wood and thatch.

Eco Perch

From its diminutive-looking exterior, you would never guess that this Eco Perch vacation rental can sleep four people. Inside are a full-sized bed, bunks for children, a kitchen with a dining area and a full bathroom with shower. Based on Blue Forest’s treehouses, the unit is elevated from the ground. It can be delivered, assembled and ready for decoration with five days.

Cleveley Mere Tree House Hotel

This may just be one of the most luxurious treehouse vacation rentals in the UK. The contemporary lakeside treehouse for getaway spot Cleveley Mere can sleep up to six, with two bedrooms, a sun deck, floor-to-ceiling windows and a rope bridge.

Treehouse Study Center

One of Blue Forest’s educational facilities, the Treehouse Study Center teaches children about nature and the woods in the center of New Forest National Park in Hampshire. It includes two treehouse classrooms, ground-based buildings containing other facilities, canopy walkways, a rope bridge, solar-powered lighting, a water catchment system and biomass energy.

Tarifa Eco Lodge

The organic shape and natural materials of the Tarifa Eco Lodge make it ideal for a nature-oriented getaway. Located in the hills of Andalucia on the Spanish Costa de la Luz, the Tarifa Ecolodge overlooks the Straits of Gibraltar, with views of Africa. It gets its power and hot water from solar panels and has its own water catchment and purification system.

Treetop Holiday

The round Treetop Holiday tree house of Sussex, near the spa town of Royal Tunbridge Wells, is an eco-lodge in the countryside with views of farmland. To access it, you must cross a nearly 80-foot-long rope bridge over a scenic pond.

Longridge Training Center

Charming in its organic simplicity, the Longridge Training Center offers water sports and land-based activities for young people. Blue Forest gave this building, which includes kitchens, meeting rooms, a training hall and more, a full range of eco-friendly features like rainwater harvesting, a heat loss recovery system and lots of sustainably sourced wood.

Feltonfleet Treehouse School

Off-kilter windows give this cute treehouse school in Cobham lots of cheer and personality, adding to the uniqueness of the space. The Feltonfleet Preparatory School added the treehouse as a sustainable way for the school to extend its teaching space.

Center Parcs Treehouses

A stunning juxtaposition of rustic and contemporary style, these treehouses for the Center Parcs Sherwood Forest each have four double bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, open living spaces, kitchens and secondary treehouse ‘entertainment pods’ with home theaters and pool tables. As with all of Blue Forest’s projects, the treehouses are eco-friendly, with lake-source heat pumps, low-energy lighting and grey water recycling.

Enchanted Forest

Built along a small river in the Hertordshire countryside, Enchanted Forest is a two-story fantasy play structure for kids. It features a large main room and open turret with a ladder leading up through a ‘secret’ trap door to a hideaway upstairs, and even has a wood-burning stove.

Adventure Playground

This sprawling treehouse has a main ‘tower’ and several different decks that form a sprawling fantasy play area for kids, incorporating a central trampoline, swings and slides.

Woodland Haven

Quirky and fun, Woodland Haven was built around a central tree as an outdoor play area for children and includes a secret trap door, cargo net, fireman’s pole, monkey bars, swings, a slide and even a basket and pulley to lift items up to the treehouse. A swing bridge attaches it to a deck across the yard.

Fairfield Eco Classroom

Looking like nothing more than a stack of logs, this structure is actually a small and efficient pre-fabricated classroom. The Fairfield Eco-Classroom is raised nearly 7 feet from the ground and covered in a log facade, which was even applied to the window shutters to complete the illusion when they’re closed.

Treetops

Built about 14 feet off the ground at the edge of a forest in Cumbria, Northwest England, the fittingly named ‘Treetops’ is a rustic treehouse with a secondary drinks deck for adults, connected with a swinging rope bridge.

Benenden School

Ringed in copper, this round school building is made of sustainably harvested timber and constructed to blend into its woodland environment. The Benenden School eco classroom is the first building in the UK to process harvested rainwater from its sedum roof into hot and cold drinking water using only solar power.

Rainforest Encounter – Eden Project

Blue Forest has designed a nearly 500-foot canopy walkway for rainforest education resource The Eden Project in Cornwall. ‘Rainforest Encounter’ will be built within the Rainforest Biome at the center, taking visitors on a journey through the treetops nearly 40 feet above the ground.

Long designed with bland respectability in mind, banking institutions have rarely been places to find dazzling architecture and interior design. But if you think that’s still the case in the 21st century, you haven’t seen these 13 modern banks, built and unbuilt, from Morocco to Norway. Vivid colors, eye-catching details, the latest in green technology and a sense of accessibility make these bank designs fresh and up-to-date.

Sugamo Shinkin Bank, Tokyo, Japan

(images via: dezeen)

Banks aren’t exactly known for being cheerful, colorful places, but Emmanuelle Moureaux’s design for the Sugamo Shinkin in Tokyo turns the old stodgy stereotype on its head. Staggered horizontal layers of color, illuminated at night, brighten up the facade and the color scheme is continued in smaller doses inside. Three elliptical glass skylights, cut in through the second floor to the lobby, let in lots of natural daylight and also provide fresh air.

Raiffeisen Bank, Zurich, Switzerland

(images via: archiscene.net)

You could be forgiven if you walked into the Raiffeisen Bank in Zurich and did a double take, wondering whether you accidentally wandered into a high-end retail store. Minimalist white surfaces, curving forms, mirror ball lighting and perforated images of historical residents from the local area characterize this unusual interior space, designed by NAU cooperative. “Raiffeisen’s flagship branch on Zurich’s Kreuzplatz dissolves traditional barriers between customer and employee, creating a new type of ‘open bank’, a space of encounter,” say the designers.

BMCE Bank, Rabat & Casablanca, Morocco

(images via: plusmood.com)

Foster + Partners reinterpreted elements of traditional Moroccan architecture to give the BMCE Bank flagship branches in Rabat and Casablanca a fresh yet grounded feel. The first buildings by the firm to be completed in Africa, these banks feature bright, open interiors with stainless steel mesh screens in Islamic geometric patterns for security and shade. Each branch also has an ‘earth tube’: an electricity-free cooling system enabled by an empty pipe that encircles the building underground to draw in cool air from the earth. Dramatic skylit domes swooping down from the ceiling to join up with curving benches provide irresistible focal points.

ING House Bank, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

(images via: architypes.net, neeshu.com)

When viewing the ING House bank headquarters in Amsterdam, some people see a shoe shape as the architects intended while others imagine some sort of gigantic insect. But the unusual form of this building has made it a popular tourist stop and a favorite subject for architecture photographers. Meyer en van Schooten Architecten built the contoured anodized aluminum and glass structure on sixteen steel legs. Inside is a hall, an auditorium for 250, a lobby, a restaurant, meeting rooms and 160 parking spaces.

BLC Headquarters, Beirut, Lebanon

(images via: dezeen)

While the mock-ups look incredibly realistic, this redesign of the BLC bank headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon has not actually been built. Architects Atelier Hapsitus submitted this proposal for a design competition and it was one of two finalists. The design remodels the old building and adds a faceted new tower that would connect with the existing one at ground level and cantilever over it at the top. This design preserves the views of the old structure, and also allows it to be removed at a later date.

Yapi Kredi Bank Academy, Istanbul, Turkey

(images via: archdaily)

Turkey’s Yapi Kredi Bank comissioned this banking academy from TEGET Architectural Office, who delivered a pair of copper beams that extend horizontally from the existing complex. The design shakes up the scheme of cube-shaped structures at the bank’s headquarters, bringing in color, asymmetry and texture in the form of oxidized copper panels on the facade. The ‘void’ between the two beams is made primarily of glass with suspended platforms and stairs that are open to street level.

DnB NOR Headquarters, Oslo, Norway

(images via: dezeen)

Design firm MVRDV envisions a pixelated, amorphous headquarters building for DnB NOR in Oslo, puncuated by stepped negative space. Diaphanous and pale, the design seems to shimmer, with glass offering both views of the city from inside and a counterpoint to the stone skin which lends solidity to the structure. Construction is currently underway on the building which contains 2,000 flexible work spaces and a panoramic 140-seat meeting space on the top level.

Middlefart Savings Bank, Fyn, Denmark

(images via: nikiomahe)

Low and angular with 83 prism-like skylights peeking up from its roof, the Middlefart Savings Bank headquarters in Fyn, Denmark reflects the shapes and colors of the ships and sailboats that it looks out upon in the harbor. The roofscape lets in light, defines the geometric design theme of the building and provides a view of the building while also shading the interior from harsh direct sunlight.

Saxo Bank Headquarters, Copenhagen, Denmark

(images via: archdaily)

Danish architecture firm 3XN gave Saxo, a Denmark-based online bank, a stunning headquarters featuring a striped glass facade and a spiraling stairway that serves as the structure’s architectural heart. The end walls of the two blocks that make up the building face toward the canal. The interior is transparent and open with a glass-roofed atrium.

BBVA Headquarters, Madrid, Spain

(images via: dezeen)

Set for construction on the outskirts of Madrid, the BBVA headquarters will resemble a slice of a sphere set among a new block of offices, commercial buildings and residences. Architects Herzog & de Meuron plan to weave irrigated gardens and alleyways between the three-story buildings “like a carpet” to create a cool, moist microclimate, giving each workspace a “green view”. The disc-shaped tower is ‘cut out’ of the horizontal design, leaving behind an open plaza, and will contain offices with views of the city and the Sierra of Madrid.

Bendigo Bank Headquarters, Sydney, Australia

(images via: bvn.com.au)

Bendigo Bank’s headquarters in Sydney, Australia juts out dramatically into the street, peppered with colorful performated aluminum sunscreens that give its facade a quirky and fun feel. The exterior of the building was designed by BVN Architects and Gray Puksand to respond to the individual orientation of each facade, and the colors incorporate both the reds of surrounding brick buildings and the greens of a nearby park. With an underfloor air conditioning system, a blackwater treating system and other environmental considerations, the building has been given a 5 star green rating.

Deutsche Bank Towers, Frankfurt, Germany

(images via: deutsche bank)

The twin towers of Deutsche Bank, which have become an iconic part of the Frankfurt skyline since they were first built in 1983, got a green renovation in recent years, transforming them with a new glass facade that glitters in the sunlight. The changes made to the building enabled the bank to cut down its energy use by half, reduce its water consumption by 70 percent and slash its CO2 emissions by nearly 90 percent.

Bank of Choice, Englewood, Colorado

(images via: army_arch)

Is that a flying saucer? Perhaps the house from Sleeper got up and walked away in the middle of the night. No, it’s the Bank of Choice headquarters in Englewood Colorado, designed by Charles Deaton in 1965. While far older than most of the buildings on this list, this structure still stands out as daringly modern when most banks have retained staid, institutional looks.

How many exciting design ideas have been put off indefinitely or discarded altogether due to the fear of failure? It’s not only the mental and emotional tolls of failure that hold designers back – it’s the physical tolls that come from wasting materials and being unable to salvage parts to use them again. What if the physical framework for these ideas was simple, reusable and highly compatible? The Grid Beam system, directly brought about by Buckminster Fuller’s Challenge, enables designers to build, disassemble and rebuild to their hearts’ content without worrying about waste or compatibility.

The Grid Beam system uses a series of wood and steel beams with evenly spaced hole patterns on all sides. No special connectors or equipment are necessary to start building all sorts of structures, vehicles and other objects. And because no welding or other irreversible modifications are required, the materials can be reused ad infinitum – sort of like real-life Legos for engineers, architects and designers.

Items made with the Grid Beam system are easily duplicated by even the most novice builders. There are no complex joinery techniques or advanced skills required; builders need only to count the hole pattern and assemble their frame with regular nuts and bolts from any hardware store. The Grid Beam pieces themselves are just pieces of wood or metal with holes drilled at specific intervals, meaning that almost anyone can create the raw materials for building amazing things right at home.

Because everything made with Grid Beam can be disassembled without damage to the components, it is simple to “reprogram” the parts into new shapes. A bunk bed can become a chair, a trailer can become part of a car – the squared frames can take on just about any form. With the addition of some simple motors, gearboxes and axles, more complex structures come to life easily. As times change and gadgets grow obsolete, they can simply be taken apart and rebuilt into whatever is needed in the future.

Grid Beam enthusiasts, many of whom have been using the system since its creation in the 1970s, see the system as a low-tech revolution. Taking manufacturing out of the hands of big companies and putting it in the hands of the individual (and making it easy for the individual to create whatever they need) makes Grid Beam the perfect system for enacting a quiet movement toward DIY technology.

But even more importantly than putting the power in the hands of the individual, the Grid Beam system allows users to learn creative problem solving. Rather than building all of the structures that one will ever possibly need, Grid Beam lets users build the needed objects one at a time with a limited number of materials. One can build a tractor to use in the spring, disassemble it and then reuse the same parts to build a harvester in the autumn.

The reusable nature of the Grid Beam system makes it the ideal solution for many problems: saving money, saving space, satisfying a creative need to build, reducing waste and eliminating the need for large manufacturing operations. The enthusiasts who sing the praises of the Grid Beam system wholeheartedly believe that the future of design rests with the individual and with this unique system. With it, they say, we can build a new world.