JSOnline brings us news of a builder near La Crosse who designs and constructs homes and buildings from whole, unmilled trees grown on his own 134-acre property. He thinks he can build 10-25 homes a year while the forest stays healthy and continues to produce. The company, Whole Trees Architecture and Construction, has been building since 2007, and the idea (from what I gather) is that trees are pretty gosh darn structurally strong all on their own, so why go cutting them apart? Obviously, a lot of these buildings take on nonstandard shapes, but they’re not as Hobbit Hole-esque as you might think. From the article:

• To date, his firm has designed 35 structures, ranging from homes and solar greenhouses to a university building, a Montessori school and a spiritual retreat, many of them in Wisconsin.
• ... Gundersen has identified every tree on his land - its size, shape, species and GPS coordinate - and lists them on a spreadsheet. After working with a client and designing a building, he uses the database to determine which trees would be perfect for each design.
• He sometimes manipulates the shapes of trees by pulling, standing or pushing on the branches.
• "A tree when bent while growing will remember that and will grow stronger," Gundersen explained. "The trees will be unique, which is the appeal because they aren't uniform."

The starting price for a non-farm or greenhouse style structure is around $120 per square foot. The article has lots of pictures (like the one above) and some sweet 360-degree panoramic shots of some of the buildings.