Green Houses

Now that's a tree house. Oops, I stand corrected. Make that "tea" house. He loves mud, gets giddy when dandelions poke through from the walls, relishes in crooked wood, and can literally put gazers in touch with nature.

He is 61-year-old Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori and he is a rebel with a cause. Until his 40s he was a roadside detective, only noting what was being built, at the same time chronicling what was being lost. While his counterparts were establishing Japan's global fame of daggering angles and superman-proof steel and glass to withstand typhoons and earthquakes, Fujimori hunted the strange, garnering ideas for his own wall of the weird.

"I don't like steel or glass or concrete. I know they can't be helped. But they need critics. That's why I've been saying for 15 years that I want to build a high-rise tower of dandelions."

That has yet to come. Though he has built a high-rise teahouse, on which dandelions do peek out. Small rooms, low entrances and a fireplace to boil water are the only traditional characteristics redefined in this Japanese teahouse. It sits on cedar legs in Nagano, Japan, rising 20 ft in the air. Child onlookers would dream of commissioning Fujimori for their backyard forts.

Using only the minimum steel beams for stability and safety of a structure, Fujimori then covers them with natural materials. In addition to green roofs and teahouses, Fujimori has created houses shaped like oven mitts and teapots.
Who would have thought you'd have to mow your roof?