Arboretics
Treenets: woven platforms strung between living trees.
I spent my honeymoon with my wife taking a treenet weaving master class from Treenet Willy, a pioneer of this emerging craft. I call my own treenet project Arboretics, combining the Latin roots arbor (a tree) and reticulum (a small net).
A treenet is woven from nylon and polyester paracord, strung between living trees and tensioned against them so the trees carry the load. Somewhere between a hammock, a floor and a trampoline.
The form was born in the redwoods, where activists wove nets high in old-growth canopy and lived in them so the trees could not be cut down. The first treenets were built to keep something alive. I am glad to be a small part of that lineage.
There is something in the tension that I keep turning over. You spend a day pulling every line taut, building stored energy into the thing on purpose, so that later somebody can lie down in it and let all of theirs go. The net holds its tension so the body does not have to.
Carson J. Bruns, Associate Professor, ATLAS Institute and the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder.