Exotic tree houses unlock our childhood imagination | Roderick Wolgamott | TEDxFultonStreetSalon

Roderick Wolgamott creates the world's most elaborate, sophisticated and ecologically sustainable tree houses.

Romero Studios was formed in 1997 by Roderick Romero Wolgamott. Since its inception, Romero Studios has dedicated itself to designing and building sustainable/green tree houses around the world. They use 98% reclaimed/salvaged materials and always try to collaborate with the local craftsmen of the particular region. Romero Studios is dedicated to their nonprofit work, both internationally and at home in New York City.

With a deep background in the arts (painting, sculpture and music), Roderick has had the honor of designing and building for other great artists: Sting and Trudie Styler, Julianne Moore, Val Kilmer and Donna Karan.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx.

I build tree houses.

I came about it from my childhood.

You know, my brothers and I
would climb up into the trees -

I grew up in Seattle -

and we would look out
over the Puget Sound,

and that's where I would go
to just find mystery,

create, you know, scenarios.

One day I was a pirate;

the other day I was in a spaceship.

The first house I'd like to talk about
is the third house I did.

It's called Casa del Sole a Mezzanotte,

which means "The House
of the Sun at Midnight."

My Italian's horrible - sorry.

You can see here - there's the lake,

and I always wanted the tree houses
to fit in with nature.

I build with 100% salvaged
and reclaimed wood.

I will go into the forest,

I'll find fallen trees,

I'll bring them to the mill,
and then I'll have them cut,

and then eight months later,
I'll build with them.

So, I just love this lake.

There's a little close-up shot.

You can see how it, hopefully,
is fitting in with nature.

This is funny.

"Uova strapazzate"
is what the Italians called me

because it means "scrambled eggs"

because they just figured I was insane,
which is pretty much true.

There's the house there,
and the tree coming down,

and you see the stone wall.

When I first found this, you know,
there's 1,000 acres that I had to walk.

They said, "Oh, go find your tree."

I'm like, "Okay."

So I walked 1,000 acres,

and it was a villa
and a beautiful vineyard,

and it's in Tuscany.

But I realized that the tree itself,
its roots were being eroded by the lake,

but that was my tree.

I had to build in this tree.

So what I did in the winter
is dove down with little goggles on

and, you know, my surf shorts -
which also they thought was hilarious -

and built a wall
12 feet down into the lake

and then another 10 feet up.

And so I saved the roots
from being eroded,

and then I knew
I could build this tree house,

which - I was so happy.

You can see, like, yeah, I was insane:

strapazzata.

It's like they weren't wrong there.

A much younger me up in the tree house.

You'll see that there's the copper roof.

That's also salvaged copper.

So, we bought bulk copper
that was taken off of churches,

and we cut it, and we banged it back out,
and we pieced it together -

kind of like doing a quilt, but of copper.

Here you'll see across from the lake.

This is interesting

because I hadn't noticed this
until I was looking in my journal.

You'll see how the tree house is,
and then the tree comes down,

and then there's the wall,
and then there's the mirror reflection?

Well, the clients
were very, very into yoga,

which I am too,

and, again, they also loved
just the ahimsa of my work,

meaning "non-harming."

So it looks like tree pose to me.

(Audience) Yeah.

I just saw that like last week
only because I was doing this.

So then, the client
is Sting and Trudie Styler.

I had them dress up like this;

I had to

because it was like opening night,
and I was into this whole Druid folklore,

and so they were very happy
to dress up like that.

All the kids did too. It was great.

The fun thing, you know,
about all the tree houses

is that they have stories,

and the thing is that each one
has its own story.

The wood has story.

The children have their stories with me.

The parents have stories with me.

And that all comes together,

and then I put that into a journal,

and then that's my way
of being able to reflect back

and go, "Oh, yeah, that's what happened."

Because it's easy to forget, you know.

So, okay, so we'll move on.

Petra Cliff House.

This is great because
my daughter's name is Petra

and my great-grandmother's name is Petra.

And it was named by the client.

The client is Val Kilmer -
very sweet, hilarious person.

One of the funniest -

well, he is the funniest guy
I've ever met.

Again, when I got there, he left a note -

it's in Pecos, New Mexico -

and the note said, again,
"Go find your tree."

But he has 6,000 acres.

I was like, "Oh, my God."

So I walked for six days.

(Laughter)

There were, seriously,
hawks hovering around me;

they were going to kill me.

And being a vegetarian,
I thought it was funny

because then I had a club.

I was like, "This thing's going to -
I'm going to get killed."

But whatever, so, I didn't, obviously.

So you can see how it's resting
into the middle of this cliff,

and the concept was that possibly
the house was maybe from the 1870s -

was up on the cliff,
and then a storm knocked it over,

and it got impaled into these trees.

And that was my concept.

That's what I went with.

Here you'll see the siding.

What happened here

was once I found the trees in the cliff
and I got my story going -

because it always is that -

and then I drove around.

I was in Pecos, New Mexico,
kind of by Santa Fe,

and I would drive and drive and drive,

and I found a barn, the barn I had to buy.

I loved this barn;
I was like, "That's my barn."

And so I went to talk to the family -

because it was like getting destroyed;
it wasn't really a functional barn -

and I said, "Can I buy your barn?"
and they said, "No."

I was like, "Rrrr."

So I went back the next day,

and I said, "Can I buy your barn?
Please, please?"

They're like, "No."

So the third day, I went back
with like a six-pack of beer,

and we sat down on their porch,
and I talked more.

They still said, "No."

By the seventh day - kind of Biblical;
I didn't think about that either -

they said, "Yes," and I was like "Ahh."

They said, "But you have to take
every single piece of wood and take it out

so we can put our trailer there."

And I'm like, "Done. Great."

So you really can see how the wood is.

It's just burnt, you know;
it's just amazing.

There were gnarly pieces
that the sun must have twisted.

It was so much fun to work with.

Again, 100% reclaim, salvage, you know.

And that's really, for me,

it's like can you imagine
like building a tree house,

working with nature

and then contributing somewhere else
to some sort of deforestation?

Just seems wrong, right?

It would be like buying
plastic bottles of water

or something like that.

It's like, where's
that plastic going to go?

Probably into the ocean, you know.

So everything has to be recyclable;
everything has to be reclaimed.

It's really important.

It's how we vote
is where we spend our money.

So I like this image because
it's like it shows how the Pecos River is.

And so the house itself
is 70 feet above water level,

so when you're in it,
you're just like, "Wow."

You really feel kind of like,
"I'm way up here."

But actually, you have to walk down
from the cliff, so ...

"Everyone smiles."

This is totally true,

because what happened was

in the end, I brought the family
that I bought the barn from,

and I brought them to the tree house,

and it's like here's Val
and me and my crew

and here's this family.

And they smiled,

but like three of them started crying

because they had no idea
that I would take this structure,

reconfigure it and put it into this cliff.

It was amazing.

And then we all went back to their house
and drank more beer.

(Laughter)

I want to touch on this, and I don't want
to fast-forward through this.

I really want to explain.

What's going on here is

I heard that there were these kids
that lived on the streets in Tangier,

and they would run along with the trucks
and try to get themselves under the axles

and hide there,

and then that truck
would get onto the ferry

and then go to Spain -
right? - across the strait.

And most of them, I guess, get hurt a lot.

And then they would get into Spain,

and then the police would catch them,

and then they'd beat the heck out of them
and send them back to Tangier.

So they tried to build tree houses
to get off the street.

And I had fallen about 40 feet,
and, thankfully, survived.

And when I heard about
this story from my friend,

I realized, like,
I've got to go over there.

Like, I've got to go help these kids
learn how to build safely

because they built a tree house,

but they were up there kind of smoking,

if you know what I mean,

(Laughter)

and they started a fire
and the thing burnt down,

and they all collapsed out of it.

And I was like, "Oh, my gosh. Okay.

One, you know,
there's fire hazards there."

And so I went over.

I called my friend Russell Simmons,
I called Sting, I called Donna Karan,

and within two hours, I had 60 grand,

and I got the guys on a plane
and we went over there,

and we spent a month
doing a tree-house workshop

where we taught these kids
that were from like the age maybe 8 to 15.

They have to leave the orphanage at 16.

And so it was just incredible.

See, that's the view from the tree house.

It's like -

It was amazing.

And there's Spain, you know.

So it's like that's what they want:

they want to go find their dad,
you know, they want to go to Spain

because they think that's the golden land.

And they were like, "We can't get visas."

And I was like, "Well,
you don't need a visa

to go somewhere in your mind.

Like, find your home here in Tangier,
and, you know, make a life of it.

You're like beautiful kids."

And 15 out of those 16 kids
all are apprenticing carpenters

in Tangier now,

which is amazing.

Being over there, I love the lanterns.

So I love those -
you know the Moroccan lanterns

that have that copper underneath
and the copper above?

Well, so I figured out I could build one.

And so the idea was, okay,
there's copper below, copper above.

It can't be that difficult.

Lot of glass.

And so the next house that I did

was inspired by my experience
with those kids

and my experience in Tangier

and how welcoming they were.

It was just, you know, it was after 9-11.

I ate dinner with so many families there.

We went to the orphanage,
and they put on concerts for us.

It was like phenomenal.

So, yeah, that's another image of it.

It shows all my weaving of the branches.

Again, copper is recycled,

again, from a church or a synagogue.

And there's an internal shot
for that glow.

So like during the day, it glowed inward,

and then at night, it glowed outward.

So just like a lantern will.

Up in here, going through the branches -

I like to create these situations

where when you're walking up,
you have to get a little small,

like in your mind

you've got to get back
into that childhood thing,

so I always create them
smaller and smaller and smaller,

and then you finally get up there,

and then you're up there.

Because, I mean, for me,
the tree houses are like a porthole;

they're a porthole
to a memory of your childhood.

It's a porthole
to reunite you with nature.

And also maybe it's about, you know,

as an adult, reconnecting
with your own child,

your child or your grandchild.

It's a place where you can meet
and have a common ground

even though you're up in the trees.

Ha ha. That's funny.

(Laughter)

There I am.

What we're going to do now
is just talk a bit about my process.

I have always been an artist;

I've been an artist since I was a child.

I've never not known an artist's life.

So these are initial drawings.

This is how I start.

This won't make sense to you,

but what it is,
it's two eyes on a waterfall.

And I did make that house.

And this is another night
of trying to figure it out.

This is about, you know,

you create the triangle,
and the problem is two-thirds solved.

Pythagoras said that;
I didn't make that up.

(Laughter)

A lot of what I'm doing
is based on my studies,

say, on Patanjali and yoga sutras
or alchemy or the Kabbalah.

These are probably
my three main influences.

And so I try to just mix it all together
and throw it into a pot

and see what comes out.

That's a good example of that:

that's alchemy.

This is a stained glass design
based on Druid folklore.

This is my studies of anatomy.

That's how I write.

Again, this is Sanskrit here.

Over here, we have the cube and the star,

which is Kabbalah.

And in the end, it is for the children.

But again, is it for the children only?

No.

The adult always says,
"Oh, I want a tree house for my kid."

And I'm like, "Okay,
I've heard this before."

(Laughter)

Because in the end, the adults move in.

The kids are there.

They have movie nights.

There's a time when they
just smoke cigars on the porch,

and then there's sometimes
it's a big picnic.

And then it's a big sleepover
for all the neighborhood kids.

Again, it's, you know,

maybe you can't get your childhood back,

but maybe you can get
that sense, you know,

that when our imaginations were flowing

and we weren't just so locked down
with the mundane life,

that is what you can get back

and that connection with your family.

Thank you.

(Applause)