Stalk, the Tree Hugger is a project comprising five 30-meter-tall existing trees in the heart of Jakarta’s busiest business district, being wrapped and clothed into a canvas of light and shadows that host multiple functions of commercial activities. The architect was to experiment with space creation by creating a simple architecture of a parametric cloth that hugs existing greeneries, creating many variations of closure enclosures of the space.
The entrance is hidden and scaled down in the ending of vertical plants; then, the restaurant visitors would be greeted and wait in a narrow foyer surrounded by greenery before being accompanied to the upper bar-resto among the trees. This 750 sqm upper bar resto was framed by a light steel-timber thatch roof around it that provides not only shades for all the glass openings but also acts as the anchor for the parametric tensile in the middle. The roof, which acted as both a façade and a varied ceiling in the interior, also serves as a lantern that is part of cityscape entertainment during night time, enhancing multiple functions accustomed to the music inside.
While researching the possibilities of creating an ever-changing space that involves nature, RAD+ar was reimagined to let the visitor of the restaurant experience how it feels to live under the shadow. Tensile structures act as a reversed shadow to create a moving and ever-changing pattern. At the same time, the wind blows as the trees move, ensuring comfort while observing and ensuring the existing nature is the heart of the architecture itself
Initiated by Antonius Richard, RAD+ar explores the possibilities of building and educating developers on how minimum natural intervention could be done without losing the commercial values of the prominent land. Flexibility of unlimited permutation patterns for nature and lights with almost no intervention of the existing nature is the goal of experimentation of how modern commercials should coexist with the landscape in a prominent urban context. Stalk the Tree Hugger is one of the experimental commercial projects in RAD+ar’s journey to inspire the decentralization of sustainable building in Indonesia.
