stomach in the trees

Finding shelter” is: living under an overhang, a rock. “Finding shelter” happens by chance: you’re walking – it’s raining, suddenly – you walk faster, you look around, there’s a rock, it was there all the time – you crawl in under out of the rain. “Finding shelter” is an act of adaptation; you take your hat off to nature, no “self” is asserted in nature’s face. “Making shelter” (as we know it in Western culture) is, by contrast, the act of taking over nature, placing something on top of nature. “Making shelter” is male. -Vito AcconciWouldn't be nice to live and eat in the trees? You can in Auckland, New Zealand at the the Yellow Tree House Restaurant by Pacific Environments Architects. 10m wide,over 12m high and 10m off the ground, this timber trussed structure is basically curved fins of glue-laminated pine. The roof is made of acrylic sheeting.

It came from the depths!

If life really originated from the waters, why not go back there? Cesar Harada and his team are building a floating architecture that evolves like a living organism as it moves across the sea. This Laboratory was initiated by Cesar with his writing about open architecture and his experiments on bioarchitecture in urban contexts. The Open Sailing project is coming along with the goal of being truely an open-source development of an International Ocean Station.

Open_Sailing 4 minutes concept from cesar harada on Vimeo.

I hope to update more as it comes in. They have started construction on the station.
Another great sea addendum is a recent project by Bios Design Collective. This project designed by Charles Lee. He produced this model of a sealife inspired boat dock. He incorporated the idea of communal gathering spaces in boat communities where trade and work can be done before retreating to the privacy of your quarters. If there was farming involved, it would be more similar to the Harada's project.
Acconci Studio designed in Korea a performing arts center for a floodable island. This project relates due to its capability to adapt and change. Some words from Acconci::

DROWNED WORLD. The floodable base of the island is a landscape of no-landscape. It’s other-worldly but not untouchable; it’s usable, walkable – you walk in and out of craters and crevices, you sit inside the craters…

HOVERING WORLD. The Performing Arts Center proper is rotated on the floodable base of the island; it’s cantilevered off the base, it escapes floods, it hovers above the water like a spacecraft.

TUBE-TO-TUBE, VEIN-TO-VEIN. The skin is sucked into the body of the spaceship to make an access. The access tube is sucked in to make a circulation-tube; one tube is sucked in to make another, the tubes take you up and down and across the spaceship, as if through the circulation-systems of the body.

BLOWING BALLOONS. The skin of a circulation-tube is sucked in, stretched out, to make an opera house, concert halls, restaurants…

STRANDED IN THE JUNGLE. The space in-between the programmed spaces is landscape, interior landscape: it’s a jungle. You stop off here on your way to a theater; you enter on different levels, it’s as if you’re floating through the jungle.

AN INSIDE OF OUTSIDE. The perforated surface of the spaceship lets sunlight in, into the jungle. It rains and snows inside the jungle.

COMING IN OUT OF THE WATER. If you don’t want to walk or drive across the bridge, you can come to the island by boat; you dock your boat in a crater. The largest craters are occupied: they’re filled with transparent capsules, that function as hotel rooms.

GOING OUT INTO THE WATER. The hotel capsules are tethered to the craters on pistons; when the river floods, the hotel capsules float.

Who is ready to take this out to sea?