Glazed eyrie: long cherished in popular imagination, the traditional rustic tree-house is given a dynamic new twist in this ingenious all-glass protoype.

Made famous by Tarzan, the tree-house has long occupied a cherished niche in popular imagination. The French were particularly enthusiastic exponents of tree life; a Parisian pleasure garden became famous in the early twentieth century for its elaborate treetop structures and the activities they accommodated. Revellers could dine in the trees and enjoy a drink with certain ladies who would emerge from the branches on Saturday evenings. More prosaically, the Kombai tribe in remote Papua New Guinea swamps hoist their dwellings as much as 30m up towering sago palms to avoid enemies and repel mosquitoes. Possibly the oldest tree-house in the world dates from 1692, constructed in the branches of a 600 year old lime in the garden of Pitchford Hall in Shropshire. When she was 13, the future Queen Victoria scrambled up into this petite Tudorbethan confection to get a better view of a fox hunt. In literature, Italo Calvino describes Baron Rampante 'the climbing baron' who ascended into a tree at 15 and finally descended as a corpse. And then, of course, there is Tarzan.

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A contemporary view of the archetypal tree-house is provided by Christof Jantzen of German practice Behnisch, Behnisch & Partner, who has designed an all glass structure that explores the effects of light and transparency, as opposed to more conventional rustic stereotypes. Made of insulated glass panels with a kaleidoscopic glazed roof, the compact structure is a grown-up version of the childhood treetop retreat and can be used as an office, art studio, yoga space or reading room. Framed in lightweight steel and supported by two concrete columns, the 600sq ft rectangular volume hovers lightly but firmly above the arboreal landscape.

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Though not built in a tree per se, the house's glass skin and laminated glass beams aim to induce a heightened interaction with nature, giving occupants the sensation that they are indeed communing with nature among the branches. A multi-coloured Benday dot pattern (based on a photograph of a cloudy sky) is imprinted on the glass roof panels, giving the surface an almost textile-like quality as light dapples and filters through different layers of colour and glass. 'The glazed roof has a screen-like effect on the interior', says Jantzen. 'It creates a strong relationship with the sky above and the area surrounding the tree-house'.

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Currently based in Behnisch's Los Angeles office, Jantzen trained at SCI-Arc and worked on the practice's spa at Bad Elster (AR April 2001), which also manifested an inventive penchant for the use of coloured glass. To devise a workable prototype for his twenty-first century tree-house, he undertook a lengthy process of design development and conducted extensive research into materials. Now all he needs is a suitably wooded site and a client with aspirations to be a latter-day Tarzan or Queen Victoria. C. S.