US retailer home improvement Treehouse has opened a second store, in Dallas, and a third is already in the planning.
Setting out to “reinvent home improvement” with twin goals of ecological and human health, Treehouse is a doing something very different in the green living retail space. Not only are its stores thoughtfully curated and elegantly functional, they are galvanising places.
Treehouse co-founder and CEO, Jason Ballard, says of his original idea for his first store in Austin: “I wanted to build a place that enabled and empowered people to reimagine their homes toward a true north of sustainability, beauty, and health.”
“I wanted to build a place that enabled and empowered people to reimagine their homes toward a true north of sustainability, beauty, and health”
Elaborating on the Treehouse philosophy, Ballard, says: “For our most pressing environmental and human health challenges, all roads lead to the home. The home consumes the highest amount of our natural resources, such as water and energy, produces the largest amount of landfill waste, and is where we will be exposed to the greatest number of toxins in our lifetime. By working to solve these problems, TreeHouse finds new routes to dramatically change the quality of our lives. We can build better shelters for ourselves, our communities, and our plan.”
Treehouse says that its latest store is a “living example”of the values. As well as the visual experience (“the kind of architecture you want to spend time in”), the new Dallas store has been designed to be energy-positive – meaning that it generates more energy than it uses.
Spread across 25,000 sq ft, this airy, eco-friendly space helps shoppers navigate product categories easily – from paints, flooring, lighting and furniture, to rain tanks and eco irrigation systems – providing educational graphics along the way (the store also offers eco classes and demonstrations – DIY Terrarium Workshop, anyone? Story Time with Coloring for Kids?).
As you might now expect, Treehouse’s holistic approach to eco-living extends deeply into the store design. “We want our buildings to re-orient people with nature nature,” comments Lewis McNeel, from Lake Flato, celebrated architecture firm that designed the Dallas store.
