Celebrity Tree Houses

  There is a growing fad among the nature-conscious upper crust.  And no, it doesn’t involve picking up trash as part of their court-ordered community service.  (FYI: Boy George doing something doesn’t constitute a fad.)

  Some celebs have found a popular new hangout.  It’s not some posh nightclub in New York or L.A., either; instead, they’re getting back to their roots and going up a tree.  Many of us played in tree houses as children, but fancy tree houses are quickly becoming the sanctuaries of the stars.  It is, for some, a way to enjoy nature.  For others, it is a place for meditation and creativity.  And for a few, the luxury tree houses have not deviated so far from purpose of our own childhood tree house; they are a place for the kids to play.

  Many of these tree houses began with the visions of Roderick Romero, a young architect, sculptor and artist who now lives in New York City.  He has designed and built structures in the trees of Sting, Julianne Moore, fashion designer Donna Karan, and a host of other Hollywood types.  He actually built the house that Val Kilmer lives in between Pecos and Las Vegas, in northern New Mexico, conveniently located 75 feet above the ground, on the side of a cliff. 

  While many of houses he has designed are nothing short of breathtaking, Romero takes little credit for the artistry.  On his website he writes, “Nature is the architect…Treehouses remind us of the inherent beauty in nature…We are all architects, building floors and floors between ourselves and our self.”  For Romero, the process of building is, and must be, natural.

  Like any architect, Romero scouts locations before he begins a project.  What is not traditional is his approach.  He may climb a tree and sit for an hour or two, just listening, taking in the energy of it.  He sees the tree as a living organism, and the creative process of building in it is also organic.  He never destroys a tree to build a tree house.  He uses only fallen wood, or wood salvaged from other old structures.  When he built Sting’s tree house on the singer’s Tuscan villa, he used only found wood and copper.  The structure is perched in an old oak tree, 45 feet above the banks of a private lake, and is where Sting does a lot of his writing and meditating.

 Romero’s climb to the top hasn’t been without a few cuts and scrapes along the way.  Last October he made the front page of the L.A. Times because of controversy surrounding a tree house he was building for TV producer Les Firestein and his screenwriter wife Gwyn Lurie, in the backyard of their home in the affluent Brentwood neighborhood.  (Firestein was a producer and writer for “The Drew Carey Show” and “In Living Color.”)  Because of the size of the tree house, and the height of its perch, a plastic surgeon next door was concerned that it offered a far-too-intrusive view of his swimming pool and hot tub.  The neighbor called code enforcement, and building was suspended until the proper building permits could be secured.  The tree house has since been completed, and christened “Firesphere.”

  Photos of Firesphere and nine other tree houses can be viewed online at http://romerostudios.com.  And you can order your own Romero tree house from the “fantasy gift” section of last winter’s Neiman Marcus holiday catalog, starting at a reasonable $50,000.

-From Pulse
   August 17, 2006