Bonsai Tree Houses by Takanori Aiba

Japanese artist Takanori Aiba creates fantastically detailed tiny tree houses atop bonsai trees. Using copper line, epoxy putty, plastic, resin and stone clay, he fashions detailed buildings, bridges, balconies and towers.

Takanori Aiba was born in 1953 in Yokohama, Japan. He built his first career as a freelance maze illustrator working for the Japanese fashion magazine POPYE. After a decade he founded his own company,"Graphics and Designing Inc.” in 1981. Since 2003, he has been putting his mind to the creation of three dimensional art works which combines his knowledge and experience of both maze illustrator and architect.

Aiba says:

My source of creations are my early experience of bonsai making and maze illustration. These works make use of an aerial perspective, which like the diagram for a maze shows the whole from above(the macro View) while including minute details (the micro view). If you explore any small part of my works, you find amazing stories and some unique characters. The early bonsai-type models look like bonsai art. Bonsai reflects the Japanese traditional aesthetic sense of expressing the magnificence of nature in a small potted plant. However, the density of decoration and the rich stories of my works contain extraordinary times and spaces which differ from the bonsai world determined by plants physiology.