The Swedish are so cool.  Seriously.  I think Sweden is an awesome place.  Now they’ve created a hotel that is unlike any other – the rooms are mirrored cubes that sit high up in the trees.  The mirrors make the cubes practically invisible from the outside, so that the natural setting is not disturbed by a built structure.

My first concern?  Birds.  Birds see their reflections in mirrors and fly at them because they think they are other birds.  The birds who do this often die.  Is the Treehotel murder for birds?  No, as it turns out.  In fact, the makers of Treehotel thought about this and have applied something like a label – invisible to the human eye but visible to birds, to prevent window strikes.

Treehotel’s philosophy is “Why not create a comfortable, well designed hotel which allows visitors to live in harmony with nature amongst the trees?”  Indeed.  Why not?  And why haven’t more people thought of this type of thing?

Treehotel is located in one of Sweden’s Boreal forest just south of the Arctic Circle.  Boreal forests, also known as Taiga, make up 27% of the planet’s forests, and are hosts to a wide range of flora and fauna, as well as many different animals.  Stay in the Treehotel, and you might see moose, reindeer, bears, and golden eagles during your stay.

Co-owner Kent Lindvall, along with several architects, created the mirror cube, as well as several other eco-friendly-looking structures in these woods, and they made sure the insides looked modern, clean, and fresh.

In addition to the Mirror Cube, there are also Bird’s Nest Room options, Blue Cone Room options, and more structures designed to work with the natural beauties of nature.  And, if you can drop more than $4K on a night at a hotel, you’re in for a very interesting stay.

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The Hundertwasserhaus (of Hundertwasserhaus) has become a cultural landmark not just in Vienna where it is located, but for the entire country of Austria.  This is despite the property only being built in the early 1980’s.  The building was the brainchild of academic architects, Professor Joseph Krawina and Peter Pelikan who conceived a property made of deliberately, uneven floors and living materials forming part of the structure and fabric of the house.

The house is actually composed of several apartments and office units and is named after the artist, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who donated his design and time for free because he did not wish for an ugly building to be built instead.  The home has a roof constructed from earth and grass with trees planted inside the building and constituent rooms with the tree branches extending to the outside through windows build around them.  The Hundertwasserhaus is one of the most visited buildings in the whole of Austria.

photo by munna on the run