Building With Whole Trees

I think the NYTimes is one of the best things on the web. And it's free! (Unlike the Wall Street Journal, naturally.) Here's an article right up our alley. Roald Gundersen is a "forester-architect" who shapes trees while they're still growing in the woods, then uses them to frame buildings. Same as SunRay Kelley and other builders in our book Builders of the Pacific Coast. SunRay, you got a brother out there!
“'It’s eminently more frugal and sustainable than milling trees,' he added.…Loggers pass over such trees because they are too small to mill, but this forester-architect, who founded Gundersen Design in 1991 and built his first house here two years later, has made a career of working with them."
“''Curves are stronger than straight lines,' he explained. 'A single arch supporting a roof can laterally brace the building in all directions.”These are weed trees, so when you take them out, you improve the forest stand and get a building out of it. You haven’t stripped an entire hillside out west to build it, or used a lot of oil to transport the lumber'.”
Article (click here) by Anne Raver
Photos by Paul Kelley for the New York Times