Supported by nothing but skinny poles, delicately balancing or tethered as if they might float away, these precarious-seeming houses laugh in the face of gravity. Cantilevering architectural volumes off cliffsides or elevating them well above ground level gives modern residences incredible views of their surroundings, whether they’re located on a mountain overlooking the sea or in the middle of a busy Japanese city.

Snohetta Treehotel, Sweden

Architecture firm Snøhetta has completed their addition to Sweden’s Treehotel, a hovering cabin that appears at first glance to be supported by no more than the staircase leading up to it. The design is based on a traditional Nordic cabin with a wood facade clad in charred boards of pine for a look that contrasts with the snow below, making the structure look heavy and solid to enhance its gravity-defying properties.

Tower House Inspired by Observatories

Tucked into the woods of upstate New York, GLUCK+’s Tower House takes inspiration from observatories for its mostly-vertical form. A bright yellow staircase is visible from outside through the glass envelope of the supporting tower, and the upper volume is topped with a terrace.

House in Yatsugatake Mountains by Kidosaki Architects, Japan

Jutting out over a cliff at the foot of Japan’s Yatsugatake Mountains, this home by Kidosaki Architects Studio expands horizontally out into midair to enhance views of the natural landscape through floor-to-ceiling glazing on three sides. The cantilevered portion of the home is supported by two diagonal steel cylinders.

Cargo Container Office Sticks Out Beyond Edge of Hill

Architect Patrick Bradley repurposed a 45-foot cargo container into an office for himself, allowing a third of it to hang out over the edge of the hilly plot as a sort of floating balcony encased in glass. The project makes very few structural changes in the container itself, staying true to its original form while modernizing its exterior.

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Hovering Homes 12 Cantilevered Elevated Residences Maximize Views

Tree houses aren’t just rustic wooden huts slapped together around a living trunk – they also come in the form of elegant modern residences incorporating the forest into their design, whether by building around existing trees or integrating them right into the floor plan. These 14 modern tree house designs blend into their forest environments and make vegetal views top priority.

Casa Vogue by Alessandro Sartore

A tree called ‘Bethany’ is the centerpiece of this home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, passing through a three-meter hole in the floor slab and up through the ceiling of the living room. Casa Vogue by architect Alessandro Sartore also accommodates a second tree in the garage, keeping as much of the original landscape intact as possible and bringing the natural landscape indoors.

The Urban Treehouse by Baumraum

German architecture firm Baumraum is responsible for many of the world’s coolest modern treehouses, including a pair in Berlin that function as a mini-hotel. The Urban Treehouse preserves the trees on a 650-square-meter privately owned wooded property within the city limits, integrating nature and architecture.

Between the Trees by Sebo-Lichy

The design of ‘Between the Trees’ by Sebo-Lichy mimics the look of natural tree trunk supports, elevating a portion of the home to work with the steep terrain. It’s built around three chestnut trees and overlooks a forest, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a rooftop terrace blurring the lines between outdoors and in. The house was inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s famous Tugendhat Villa in Czech Republic.

Modern Austin Treehouse by MF Architecture

This entire Austin home was essentially designed around views of trees in the front yard and on the back terrace. Each of the rooms of the house by MF Architecture look out onto the oak in the backyard, which shelters the entire outdoor area.

Urban Treehouse Apartment Complex by Luciano Pia

The last place you’d expect to find a treehouse is in the middle of an urban Italian city – let alone an entire apartment building planted with dozens of trees on every level. 25 Verde by Luciano Pia has a load-bearing steel structure shaped like tree trunks as its base, with 63 wooden-shingled dwellings staggered around 50 trees. In addition to looking really cool, the trees help reduce air and noise pollution for the residents.

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Arboreal Architecture 14 Houses Built Around Within Trees

We’ve seen tree houses that function as oversized sculptures, play structures for kids, sky-high tea houses and elevated retreats for work or meditation, but how many tree house designs actually fulfill dreams of living in the forest canopy full-time? These 12 residential tree houses range from traditional huts built over a hundred feet above the forest floor to a stunning ultramodern cylindrical glass house that envelops an entire tree.

Amazing Cylindrical Glass Treehouse

This ultramodern, all-glass cylindrical house isn’t just in the trees, it contains one. ‘Tree in the House’ by Masov Aibek is a four-story residence in the woods of Almaty City, Kazakhstan with a spiraling staircase leading to each completely transparent level. A few plasterboard walls provide privacy for the bathroom and sleeping areas. The house will be available for rent, and though it may seem like it’s only suitable for exhibitionists, its location deep in the forest makes privacy less of a concern.

Traditional Residential Treehouses of Asia

Papua New Guinea’s Korowai Tribe is just one example of people who have traditionally built their homes in the canopies of trees, some as high as 115 feet off the ground. The houses are typically built in a single sturdy Banyan tree, with poles added for extra support. Each house accommodates as many as a dozen people. Elevated houses can also be found in flood-prone areas of India, Cambodia and other Asian nations.

Finca Bellavista Treehouse Community, Costa Rica

A couple went to Costa Rica in search of a small plot of land and ended up saving 600 acres of rainforest from the chopping block. Uncertain at first what to do with all that acreage, they began to envision a network of tree houses that soon became ‘Finca Bellavista,’ a sustainable treehouse community with individual residences connected by zippiness and suspension bridges. The self-sustaining complex includes a dining hall, open-air lounge, campfire, bath house and ‘wedding garden.’

4Treehouse by Lukas Kos

Looking a bit like a Japanese lantern when it’s illuminated at night, the 4Treehouse by Toronto designer Lukasz Kos is a modern take on the classic wooden tree house with a facade of slats that provide shade and privacy. A semi-detached staircase on casters provides a stable, steady entrance to the home no matter how much the structure itself may be rocking in the wind.

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The High Life 12 Incredible Residential Tree House Designs

Daydream about an ideal fairytale retreat in the forest, and what you envision will likely look a lot like these 14 amazing arboreal creations. There’s simply no other word for these tree houses but ‘magical,’ and UK-based builder Blueforest has that style down pat with conical towers, Gothic windows, quirky cedar shingles and swaying rope bridges.

Living the Highlife Tree House

Two separate retreats, one for kids and one for adults, are lofted high into the sky and connected by a canopy walkway at the ‘Living the Highlife’ treehouse. The adult section features a castle-style conical thatched roof, while the kids’ has three medieval towers, one of which contains a games room accessed by secret trap door.

Willow Nook Tree House

How much relaxation can you even handle? The Willow Nook Tree House is not only a tranquil getaway set among flowering greenery, it’s got a wood stove, a cedar hot tub on its deck, and a beautiful handmade swing.

Alice in Wonderland Tree House

Inspired by the off-kilter architecture seen in the classic story Alice in Wonderland, this treehouse in Spain includes “handmade wonky windows,” a copper turret and cedar lining that was cut to look like melting chocolate. The air-conditioned interior room has a TV and storage for toys.

Alton Towers

Looking like something out of a fantasy movie, the Alton Towers Treehouse village is a series of 5 luxury treehouses for the Alton Towers Resort, the UK’s leading theme park. Each sleeps up to 8 people and contains its own open-plan living space and en-suite bathrooms.

Quiet Tree House

Don’t be fooled by the rustic feel of the Quiet Treehouse, which Blueforest calls “an entirely new concept in arboreal living.” While it’s made to resemble a tree, it comes complete with next-generation sound engineering to be equally at home in a natural woodland environment or modern urban setting, and it’s sound-proofed. It’s also full of the latest ‘quiet’ gadgets from companies like Bose, Smeg, Samsung and Dyson.

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Fairytale Retreats 15 Magical Blueforest Tree Houses

Ranging from minimalist elevated meditation cabins to complex climate-controlled company meeting spaces, the many treehouse creations of German company Baumraum offer unconventional and often strikingly modern silhouettes in natural settings. Custom-designed and costing anywhere from $25,000 to nearly $200,000, these treehouses and treehouse hotels are places for adventure and retreat amongst the foliage.

Treehouse Halle

Stairs ascend through a hole in the roof of a garage on a German property, spiraling around an oak tree to reach the Treehouse Halle. Baumraum set this zinc and wood structure 11 meters above the ground as a sleeping and relaxation space, supported by two steel stilts anchored to the lower part of the tree. A double-sized bed peeks out a large window onto the surrounding landscape.

Almke Treehouse

A lucky scout group in Wolfsburg, Germany gets to meet at this elevated clubhouse constructed around a pine tree, with two almost-identical wooden volumes set at staggered heights within the forest canopy. The Almke Treehouse provides a place to gather, eat and sleep, with the lower volume full of bunk beds for eight.

Treehouse Djuren

An elliptical volume with egg-like sides seems to float above a wooded family property in Northern Germany, supported on a series of four stilts around two are oak trees. Sleeping benches covered in gray felt offer a comfortable perch from which to look out onto the trees.

Treehouse Solling

Treehouse Solling hovers above a pond like something out of a fairytale, an unusual two-story structure with a rounded roof punctured by a skylight. The treehouse serves as a sleeping place and observation point connected to a nearby forester’s cabin via a cable-suspended bridge. Like most of Baumraum’s structures, the outside is covered in zinc plating and the inside is lined with timber.

Treehouse in Belgium

This treehouse was envisioned as the perfect place for a paper company to brainstorm about sustainability among nature. Located in a forest in Belgium, the climate-controlled space is a lot more like a conventional building than most treehouses, containing a kitchen, lounge and restroom as well as a ventilation system and motion-sensor LED lights. It offers all the comforts of a meeting space within an office, but in an environment that’s a lot more conducive to creative thinking.

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13 Modern Tree Houses By Baumraum