For our latest guide, we’ve rounded up 10 home interiors that combine the indoors with the outdoors, featuring lush trees in pots, planters, and indoor courtyards.
With so many people continuing to work from home during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the comfort and design of our homes have become an important aspect of everyday life.
Bringing the outdoors indoors by adding larger trees to the home, in addition to regular houseplants, can help make interiors feel fresher as well as more serene.
Below, we’ve found 10 homes from the Dezeen archive where trees light up interiors.
This is the latest roundup in the Dezeen Lookbooks series that provides visual inspiration for designers and design enthusiasts. Previous lookbooks include homes with exposed concrete, bedrooms with elegant wood paneling, and living rooms with distinctive rugs.
Margin House, Japan, by Yukawa Design Lab
Japanese architect Kohei Yukawa designed Margin House for himself and his family, arranging the house around a lobby in the center containing a tall tree.
The space around the inner arbor was based on the traditional Japanese Duma rooms, which were made of compacted earth and formed a threshold between the interior and the exterior.
Here, the tree signals the traditional connection to the outdoors and also helps accentuate the height of the room.
Find out more about Margin House ›
Eighty-seven Park, United States, by Renzo Piano
Florida Eighty Seven Park is a beachfront building in Surfside designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. Inside the oval-shaped apartment, Paris studio Rena Dumas Architecture Interieure decorated the interiors to refer to the green landscape surrounding the building.
Tall areca palm trees in white pots line a long lounge area with floor-to-ceiling glazing, creating the feel of a tropical indoor jungle.
Find out more about Eighty Seven Park ›
Kinotta Terrace, Japan, Designed by Keiji Ashizawa Design and Norm Architects
Trees don’t have to be big to bring a breath of fresh air into the house. In this apartment in Tokyo, a smaller tree in the living room has twisted roots making it look like a large bonsai tree.
Its wooden chest matches the apartment’s oak veneered panels and contrasts with the pale gray concrete walls. The entire apartment is designed around a central courtyard to give the owners the experience of living in a garden house.
Find out more about Kinotta Terrace ›
AgriNesture, Vietnam, by H&P Architects
The AgriNesture home in Mao Khe, Vietnam, features an arable roof on which its owners can grow food. This connection to nature continues inside the house, where there is a small tree in a cement planter upstairs, lit by a skylight.
In addition to the tree, the house also features plenty of hanging plants in pots, where the green leaves contrast well with its red brick walls.
Find out more about AgriNesture ›
The Greenery, Italy, by Carlo Rati and Italo Rota
Italian architects Carlo Rati and Italo Rota designed The Greenery, a farmhouse extension in the countryside outside Parma, “to blur the boundaries between the natural and the artificial.”
In the annex’s open-plan living and kitchen space, a 10-meter-high ficus tree grows in the center of the space.
“Twentieth-century Italian architect Carlo Scarpa once said, Choose the tree between the tree and the house,” Ratti said.
Find out more about The Greenery ›
Wild Tropical House, Indonesia, by Dan Mitchell
This brutalist home, created by architectural studio Patisandhika and designer Dan Mitchell, has Pandanus utilis, or screwpine, planted in a gap in the living room’s concrete floor.
The indoor tree refers to the design ethos of the house, which features many facets that open directly to the outside and were created to give a sense of ‘tropical outdoor living’. The designer also intended all the plants scattered around the house to soften the concrete.
Find out more about a wild tropical house ›
House for a Daughter, Vietnam, by Khun Studio
The House for a Daughter, containing one area for the woman who lives here permanently and one for her family who visits frequently, is built around a three-height atrium filled with plants.
A tall tree stands between the white walls curved from the inside, while the plants hang above them. Large skylights flood the house with light and help plants thrive.
Learn more about House for a Daughter ›
Weather House, Japan, by Not Architects Studio
The Weather House is located on a corner site in Tokyo and was designed by Not Architects Studio, who took advantage of its design by wrapping two sides of the house entirely with metal mesh.
Here, the terraces act as indoor/outdoor mixed spaces and are decorated with plants and small trees. In the end, the net will be completely covered in climbing plants, completing the transformation.
Find out more about the Weather House ›
Penthouse Antwerp, The Netherlands, by Hans Verstwift
Belgian architect Hans Verstoft has transformed an Antwerp office building into a penthouse featuring an outdoor patio garden that can be seen from two floors of the apartment.
The penthouse serves as an office and home for Verstuyft, who wanted the apartment to have the ‘atmosphere of a non-office building’. The organic appearance of the garden compensates for the minimalist interior design used for the rest of the apartment.
Find out more about penthouses in Antwerp ›
Cave House, Mexico, by Abraham Cota Paredes
There is a tree-planted atrium in the center of this home in Mexico that was built for a family in Guadalajara. A two-story window extends from the house, and it was designed as a white “cuboid”.
“On the ground floor, the crown of the tree rises, filling the void created by the double heights, extending its branches throughout the surrounding spaces,” explained architect Abraham Kota Paredes.
Main image from The Greenery by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Alessandro Saletta from DSL Studio.
These are the latest in our series of research brochures that provide curated visual inspiration from Dezeen’s photo archive.
For more inspiration, check out previous research books showing wood-paneled bedrooms, living rooms with accent rugs and homes with exposed concrete brickwork.