Blackberry Mountain Treehouse

Designed as a retreat for a busy couple vacationing from a bustling city, our team carefully crafted an experiential approach to allow visitors to slowly decompress as they travel to the home. Starting with the drive up the mountain from the Little River valley in Walland, TN and climbing to an elevation of 2340 feet, visitors drive down a gently sloped asphalt driveway to a crushed stone motor court. The crushed stone provides visitors with a tactile and auditory connection to the landscape, made especially apparent by the quietness of the natural surroundings.

The motor court is intentionally separated from the Treehouse by a 90-foot walk; starting with a flagstone path, transitioning to an Ipe wood boardwalk, and slowly becoming a bridge as the mountainous grade slopes away. Over this walk, visitors slowly find themselves within the tree canopy and are met by a simply detailed opaque box, clad with stone that has been quarried on the mountain. Greeted by a blackened steel entry portal and a quarter-pivot blackened steel door, visitors interact with a vertical wooden bar handle and enter the home.

Upon entering, visitors are drawn through an open-air corridor clad with blackened steel and given their first uninterrupted glimpse of the mountains, framed by the compressive black walls and ceiling. On the other side of the corridor, guests step onto an entry deck surrounded by old-growth treetops and experience the expansive, breathtaking view of the Smoky Mountains.

The steel and glass Treehouse is intentionally hidden behind the stone mass as if it were a secret enclave that only visitors are allowed to discover. Upon entering, visitors feel anchored by the stone mass yet secluded from the world because of it. The bed is anchored by the stone wall and flanked by cased openings into the stone mass on either side. The kitchen features a window looking back into the blackened steel entry corridor and through a wood storage alcove to the west. On the right, visitors are drawn into the bathroom with a view of a granite-carved tub, overlooking the forest to the east.

the living space seamlessly extends through a 6-panel multi-slide door onto a cantilevered deck. It is there, while standing against the handrail overlooking the mountains, that visitors fully experience a 180-degree vista of mountains and sky.