Temporary One-Room Cabins in NoCal

Donald Judd, if he had built treehouses, might have dreamed up these cabins. But unlike Judd’s work in steel and concrete, where endurance is central to form, Douglas Burnham’s buildings — elaborately engineered and carefully conceived in relationship to each other — are simultaneously substantial and ephemeral; with army-green canvas roofs tied by nylon ropes, it’s obvious that these stilted structures are cast as provisional. Instead of clearing the land and building a big house, “the forest becomes the house,” Burnham says. “It envelopes everything.”

From “A Constellation of One-Room Cabins, Embedded in the Forest” by Nancy Hass for New York Times T Magazine; Photo by Stefan Ruiz

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