Ewok eco-friendly sphere for high living

Telegraph 26 Nov 07;

"The objective of this project is to be able to move into the rainforest and have an experience of it - with as little impact as possible. I want to celebrate the beauty and energy that is already there, without changing anything."

Looking more like the homes used by the Ewok characters in the Star Wars film Return of the Jedi these tree houses enable families to live in the forest without having to worry about their carbon footprint.

The 11ft-wide eco-friendly Free Spirit Spheres, which can sleep four people, are suspended in the trees and accessible by a rope bridge.

The £74,000 hand-crafted wooden spheres are constructed using boat building techniques and are coated in fibreglass, making them waterproof and robust.

They have a fully equipped kitchen, including a microwave, fridge and sink. The rest of the interior, including loft beds and bronze doors can be custom ordered.

Tom Chudleigh, the designer, said: "Uses for these durable Spheres are limited only by one's imagination. Healing, meditation, photography, canopy research, leisure and game watching are just some of the things you could do.

"Wood spheres are made of two laminations of wood strips over laminated wood frames. The outside is then finished and covered with clear fibreglass. The result is a beautiful and tough skin.

"The structural integrity of a sphere and the ability to move and absorb shock loads combine to produce a robust accommodation package."

The spheres are attached to the trees by a web of supporting ropes in at least three places.
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Mr Chudleigh, from Vancouver, Canada, and a carpenter by trade, added: "The objective of this project is to be able to move into the rainforest and have an experience of it - with as little impact as possible.

"I want to celebrate the beauty and energy that is already there, without changing anything."

He is now in the process of designing a sphere which will hold a washroom, a shower and a sauna. He added: "It will produce only clean water and compost - with luck it could serve a whole colony of spheres on a remote setting."

The spheres take three people no more than three days to put up and can be ordered from www.freespiritspheres.com.