Le Lit Perché

Alain Laurens, a former chairman of a major French advertising agency, left his position there in 1999 to found La Cabane Perchée, a Paris-based studio that designs and builds treehouses. The firm's projects are unusually elegant by treehouse standards, but none so much so as Le Lit Perché, a roomy 42-square-foot bed made from six segments of mattress perched on a red cedar platform within a railing of slender steel cables. Mr. Laurens, 59, built the first one in 2005, 24 feet above the ground at his own country house in Bonnieux, in the South of France, and has since built 12 more for customers. Le Lit Perché, which costs $15,000, “is for people to sleep in trees” without having to spend the money to build an entire treehouse, Mr. Laurens said. It features a pulley system that raises and lowers a basket that can be filled with food, wine or other supplies. For those who find being suspended in mid-air (or completely exposed to the elements) scary, and not conducive to romance, the bed can be placed as low as six feet off the ground.