The Museum of Architecture’s (MoA) Bonsai Treehouses Exhibition opens tomorrow (4 July) and features structures from Foster + Partners, Stride Treglown and White Arkitekter among many others.
Organised in partnership with heritage interpretation specialist Paolo Cocco, the event is due to run until the end of August at Connaught Village near Marble Arch.
The MoA said the exhibition ‘explores how creative imagination can be scaled down, adapted or reinterpreted when confronted with the constraints, aesthetics and philosophies of bonsai cultivation, challenging artists, architects and designers to reimagine spatial and structural concepts through the lens of miniature living landscapes’.
Practices were invited to design and fabricate a tiny treehouse structure ‘compatible with the bonsai’s perceived scale’.
A brief added: ‘Each design should consider how architecture can coexist with or be inspired by the living form of the tree, whether structurally, conceptually or symbolically.’
The museum partnered with bonsai expert Peter Warren, whose ‘exceptional’ specimens were chosen by participating practices for their designs.
MoA founder Melissa Woolford said: ‘The range of practices joining Bonsai Treehouses this summer is really exciting – from some of the most established names in architecture to brilliant younger studios, every one of them has embraced our unique brief.
‘Each bonsai in the collection is unique, and we asked every architect to respond to that individuality – to design for the specific tree in front of them, not for a treehouse in the abstract. The results are surprising, thought-provoking, and genuinely fun to discover.’
Warren added: ‘I have brought trees from my own collection to this exhibition, each one shaped over many years, and every one with its own character. I was very curious to see which trees would be chosen, and how each architect would respond to the particular form in front of them. I hope visitors will be delighted by the pairing of tree and miniature built structure.’
McCloy + Muchemwa boisai treehouse 2026 pic: Luke O’Donovan
Source: Luke O’Donovan
The 29 bonsai treehouses, as described by the MoA
Archimode: The Elevated Safari Suite
A vertical retreat inspired by African safari lodges, rising through the canopy from communal gathering spaces to intimate sleeping suites immersed within the tree.
Artificial Kreativity: Pirate Pavilion HQ
A children-led design made without computers, sketches or symmetry – just imagination, boldness, and play.
Arup Architecture: A Walk Among the Tree
Timber platforms suspended from the branches, never resting on the tree, connected by a winding stair that leads visitors up through the canopy to an open viewing point among the leaves.
Ashton Architecture: The Living Lens
Three spaces, each framing a different perspective on the bonsai: its roots; the sky through its branches; and the intimacy of the canopy – a slow, contemplative journey through the tree.
Ayre Chamberlain Gaunt: The Hug / Hōyō
Gently wraps around the bonsai in a ring shape, inspired by Japanese origami and shoji paper, with helicoidal ramps spiralling around the trunk while the tree itself is left undisturbed at the centre.
Bogle Architects: Bilanx
A spiral stair shaped by the Fibonacci sequence wraps the tree, leading visitors up into the canopy and into a space for learning and quiet reflection – a treehouse designed by a practice with deep roots in educational architecture.
Bogle Architects bonsai treehouse 2026 pic: Luke O’Donovan
Source: Luke O’Donovan
Carpe Diem Studios: The Secret Canopy: A Sanctuary of Wonder
Rooted in Japanese architecture and Feng Shui principles, this miniature sanctuary is integrated carefully into the bonsai’s form so it appears to have grown there – an invitation to slow down and find wonder in a small space.
Design International: The Original Architect
Using photogrammetry to map every contour of a 40-year-old Hawthorn bonsai’s bark, Design International developed five miniature dwellings that fit precisely to their section of trunk – a community that could only ever exist on this one tree.
EcoLogic Studio: Rooted House 3D
Printed in algae-based biopolymer, this dark ribbed structure blurs the line between root system and wall, living tissue and architecture – tree and shelter conceived as a single, co-evolved organism.
Form Place Inspired by Yukitsuri
The Japanese practice of wrapping trees in rope structures to protect them through winter – a series of vivid yellow filigree timber cones wrap through and around the bonsai trunk as an act of quiet care.
Foster + Partners: The Forest Unseen
Inspired by the mycorrhizal fungi that connect trees underground, woven structures give visible form to the invisible networks that sustain a forest – a reminder that a forest is built not by trees alone, but by relationships.
Haptic Architects: The Commons
A shared habitat that puts the tree first, making room for birds, insects and other species alongside people – a small model, the practice suggests, of a larger truth about what coexistence might actually require.
HSLSC (sponsored by Michael Swords Architects): Treasures of the Tide
Inspired by hobbit homes and Brighton and Hove’s coast. This treehouse is built from recycled beach finds – sea glass, pebbles and reclaimed materials – turning discarded objects into something magical.
Hyper Space Architects: Forager’s House Built from salvaged timber offcuts and shaped to mimic epiphytic fungi, this functioning micro-ecosystem supports living plants externally and a network of living mycelium within – architecture that actively generates life rather than merely sheltering it.
Imperial College London, Department of Mechanical Engineering: Opposites Attract
Drawn from the philosophy of yin and yang, the treehouse holds the sun, moon and stars within – an exploration of how separate, contrasting forces come together to create something whole.
Macro Micro Architects: The Second Pine
A historically charged provocation: the story of Scots pine felled for British naval shipbuilding three centuries ago, and a question about whether we are ready to reshape our relationship with the trees we have long taken for granted.
Mamou-Mani Architects + Fab.Pub: Together
The bonsai’s own branches, forks and voids were 3D scanned to locate natural points of support, then modular pods designed to fit around them – a miniature village whose form was dictated entirely by the tree.
The Manser Practice: Wabi-Sabi: Together in Growth
Guided by the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, cocoon-like pods and reused materials, including food packaging, celebrate imperfection and change as the natural conditions of growth.
McCloy + Muchemwa: Unpicked Treehouse
Rather than a single built object, the rooms and roof of this treehouse have been deliberately unpicked and dispersed between the twisting branches of a Chinese Elm bonsai – a three-dimensional realisation of the exploded isometric drawing, creating a series of interconnected spaces shaped entirely by the tree.
Michaelis Boyd: Pining for Togetherness
Approaches the pine tree at three scales: the bonsai, the cone and the needle, with the pine cone’s structure forming the skeleton of a treehouse that the bonsai leans into and grows around.
Museum of Architecture: Bookworm’s House
A parallel between trees and books: both carry the mark of every generation that has encountered them, and both offer a world apart from the everyday.
EcoLogic Studio bonsai treehouse 2026 pic: Luke O’Donovan
Source: Luke O’Donovan
Museum of Architecture: The Explorer’s Treehouse
Built for the curious child who asks questions, ventures just out of sight of the familiar, and calls it an adventure.
Museum of Architecture: The Colourful Urban Treehouse
A treehouse celebrating the relationship between architecture and landscape, drawing on the colours found in both to create a connected, harmonious experience.
Ruth Campbell & Co: Play Together
Circular windows framing the canopy, rope ladders, hammocks, bug hotels, and a spiralling slide – a treehouse that celebrates the transformative power of play and the many different ways children connect.
Stockwool: Unruffled
Inspired by a felt nest encountered at the Design Museum, a jewel-like suspended orb opens to become a communal space and closes for shelter – accessed by rope ladder up and pole down.
Stride Treglown: The Gathering Grove: Togetherness in Miniature
Dozens of individual treehouses cluster around a central ‘town hall’ on tiered platforms – a miniature city that argues, in small scale, that spaces become richer when arranged in relation to one another.
Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design: Kizuna
Named after the Japanese word for an enduring bond between people, the treehouse is conceived as a community hub – zen garden, water feature, accessible gathering spaces, and a shared perch at the very top.
Tomato Architecture x oo office: Moongazer
Circular forms and the interplay of light and shadow create a platform for direct dialogue between inhabitants, tree and sky – an ongoing storytelling device rather than a static object.
White Arkitekter: The Circular Bughouse
Not for people but for pollinators: a seasonal timber and clay resting spot for bees and insects that will quietly disassemble itself when autumn arrives, leaving no trace on the tree it called home.
White Arkitekter bonsai treehouse 2026 pic: Luke O’Donovan
Source: Luke O’Donovan