The Treehouse Pod

Serving as a quiet study retreat, a sunlit family office and music room, Sinead and Manny’s garden studio is a memorable self-build project completed over a summer with help from their neighborhood. Built on the ground with aspirations to elevate the structure to the treetops later down the line, their garden sanctuary shows how thoughtful design can enhance day-to-day health and wellbeing. Natural materials, community involvement and circular design were at the heart of the project, with the concept growing from a greater desire for natural light, privacy and the flexibility of future relocation. 

Read their lovely first-hand account of the design, build, and finished space:

Build Diary / Process

“Our Treehouse sits snug between two towering sycamores at the bottom of our small urban garden. From first contact to enjoying the finished product, has been a joy. A collaborative project that started with the dream of a treehouse and finished with the most restful and restorative working, playing and studying space we could have imagined. 

About to embark on a deep retrofit of our home, we promised our eldest daughter her own space to revise for her GCSEs whilst we carried out work on the house. Given the upcoming works we opted to build the Treehouse first on the ground, with the aspiration of moving it up into the trees in the future. U-Build’s circularity allows us to have this flexibility and we designed the Treehouse with this in mind. 

The U-Build’s team’s enthusiasm for the project and their co-design approach was a delight. We designed together dimensions specifically for our space and chose window shapes and design to harness the morning and evening daylight that our terraced townhouse doesn’t get. With privacy in mind, we placed smaller windows high up on the wall facing backwards the terrace houses. The cladding is purposely vertical to mirror the trees that surround it and draw the eye up. To take full benefit of the nature in our small urban garden and to bathe in its even smaller urban forest, we chose to incorporate skylights and a full length window. They give us restorative views of the leaves and a lovely natural light.”

“A strong driver in our choice were the sustainable elements of U-Build: generous and natural insulation, high-performing windows, airtightness approach and use of beautiful natural and sustainable materials. With added electrics, ethernet and infrared heating panel it makes it a full functioning office/study space with the health and wellbeing benefits of natural materials, light and thermal comfort

Armed with the all important instructions, 3D images and the team on hand to answer questions, we built the Treehouse over a Summer. The self-build nature of the U-build concept allowed us to spread the construction out with us, our kids, the neighbours’ kids and our contractors getting involved as time and commitments allowed. Everyone felt involved, from offloading the materials to the final cladding being fastened. The U-Build box system worked so well, the plywood was genuinely a joy to work with and we loved choosing the sequencing of the cladding.”

Reflection on Finished Project

Sinead and Manny’s daughter became the first user of the cabin who offered her own personal experience: 

“During my GCSEs it was helpful to have a space away from everyone to focus. I loved the environment of the room with all the wooden elements and helped me have a calming space to escape to. The Treehouse is now regularly used by every member of the family at different points in the day, for work, for study, even to have a quiet space to play guitar!

We love working in the Treehouse, with the squirrels for company, regularly landing on the roof mid-call to remind us that they are there. We keep our cameras on, no blur. We want people to ask about our space (even if they often think it’s a background we’ve selected). We want to tell them about U-Build, to spread the message that there are sustainable, circular ways to build that will allow you to be able to escape, dwell and work surrounded by nature, natural materials and daylight.”

If you feel inspired by this self-build story and have your own project in mind, please do get in touch by emailing us at info@u-build.org. You can also browse our Garden Studio project archive, use one of our designs as a starting point, or digitally create your own pod from scratch.