Architects Ifat Finkelman and Deborah Warschawski have teamed up to build a wooden structure around an old pine tree to update a courtyard space at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Situated at the entrance of the museum’s Wing for Art Education, the IMJ Tree House provides a gathering point for both adult and children visitors.
“As a tribute to the childhood collective memory of a treehouse, we positioned a small roofed structure where children can hide and overlook at high up a tilted trunk raised above the meticulous surroundings of the museum,” said the architects. The house is built of 2cm thick hardwood boards fixed onto a steel skeleton. Children can also enter and exit the structure via a metal pole with foot pegs. A hole in the treehouse floor accommodates the pine trunk, and provides another surface to clamber up. “The rubber surface hides the underground infrastructure configuration, as well as a widespread root system from the pine tree.”
