This article was originally published on Domus 1072, October 2022.

To build a playhouse in a garden, a secret haven where kids can imagine fantastic adventures unencumbered by the rules and responsibilities of adults. A bit like a tree house. But unfortunately, in this case, there is no tree, and the neighbours sadly had to cut theirs down, too. This, in a nutshell, is the uncommon request that the London-based studio De Matos Ryan – founded in 1999 by Angus Morrogh-Ryan and Jose Esteves De Matos – had to work with for a young family with children who live in the city’s north-west area. 

The architects devised a prefab structure composed of a series of triangular Douglas fir frames, measuring 4.1 metres tall in total and shaped like a truncated pyramid. The project was designed with the clients’ children starting from a key concept: to make a den that kids could access more easily than adults, with a lookout at the top. “The unusual form and abstract scale of the structure provides a platform for imaginative play and permissive exploration,” explain the designers. While the entrance is a low portal that one must stoop under and crawl into the structure, the inside is spacious, tall and empty, and the levels are connected by a ladder in wood and rope. 

The overall impression is like being inside a large empty tree trunk, or in a spaceship or castle tower. The windows, which echo the house’s shape, offer particular views of the outside and can be opened for ventilation. At the top, an electric skylight with sensors closes automatically if it starts raining. On the cladding in Siberian larch planks, a stainless steel cable lattice aids the growth of climbing plants that, over time, will help the den to look like the tree that never was.

Due to its unusual height and shape for a garden, planning permission was sought and granted with the only condition that the structure – which took a week to assemble – would have to be disassembled and removed if the property was sold. A bit like Penfold, the cartoon character from Danger Mouse: a timid, bespectacled hamster who is codenamed Jigsaw because, at the first sign of danger, he falls apart.