The Andrada Estate Treehouse is both a child-centred architectural project and the setting of a turning point in Bea and Diego’s relationship. Bea designs it as a place that can change with Diego’s daughter, from a play space for a four-year-old into a private retreat for an adolescent. The treehouse’s successive levels make that imagined future tangible; while construction is still incomplete, its shelter from outside eyes also gives Bea and Diego a place to be together.

A house designed to grow with its occupant

Bea presents the finished design in three dimensions to Diego and Ingrid after Ingrid has reviewed the plans and suggested two changes that improved the proposal. Bea is eager for Diego’s response and hopes the professionalism of the presentation will outweigh an earlier social misstep. Her explanation sets out a house with distinct stages of use rather than a single fixed-purpose structure. The lowest level is a play area; above it is a place to rest and look out over the garden; the uppermost level is intended for the girl’s adolescence, when she might want privacy and room to bring one or two friends.

That upper room is deliberately held back from the child for now. Bea imagines it as a destination the girl can aspire to reach as she grows, while Diego may use the space in the meantime. In this way, the design builds a future into the house: its layout gives childhood a place of its own while reserving a more private retreat for a later age. The project is not only a compact play structure but a sequence of spaces whose access and purpose change over time.

Play, access, and safety

At the base of the trunk, the first level combines climbing ropes and nets with a small trampoline set close to the ground, rope ladders, and a swing. The second level offers a bed for naps overlooking the garden. Its window can open fully to turn the room into a terrace, joining an enclosed resting place to the outdoor view. At the top, the adolescent’s house provides a different kind of space: less a play area than a private room for the girl and perhaps a couple of friends.

Safety is built into Bea’s account of the design. She proposes cushioning the full surface with rubber flooring like that used in children’s playgrounds, and covering part of the tree’s base as well. The aim is to reduce the danger of falls and allow the child to play there alone. These details make the treehouse’s appeal depend not just on height or novelty but on the possibility of independent use. Its levels invite climbing, while the softened ground addresses the risk that climbing entails.

Dragon wings and practical decisions

The design’s most distinctive ornament is a pair of black dragon wings, prompted by the girl’s fondness for Cómo entrenar a tu dragón. Bea says she has also drawn on Viking houses, though in a highly stylized form, and imagines the wings made from recycled tires. She knows an artist in Madrid who could make them; they might move in the wind or be operated by the child from inside. The feature gives the project a playful, personalized character while linking its appearance to materials Bea proposes reusing.

The presentation also reaches practical questions that are not yet settled. Later, Diego climbs into the treehouse and says he likes the stairs, then asks whether they will become slippery in rain. Bea has considered adding a rough central strip, perhaps of unpolished stone, or using an aluminum-and-metal alloy. She notes a drawback to the latter: it could become very hot in summer. The exchange shows the design still being worked through on site, with its imaginative form accompanied by unresolved choices about materials and everyday use.

An unfinished refuge

The treehouse acquires a use Bea had not described in her presentation when she and Diego begin an affair there. They inaugurate it before the build is finished: four walls are standing, enough to place them under cover and out of indiscreet view. The setting shifts from a structure imagined for a child’s play and future privacy to a temporary shelter for the adults’ intimacy. Their encounter is impulsive and messy; they drink, have sex over the remains of a cake, and spill beer on their clothes, laughing at the mishap rather than treating it as consequential.

Afterward Bea falls asleep in Diego’s arms. When she wakes at night, she is alone beneath a duvet, with a kerosene lamp burning; she cannot find either her clothes or Diego. The moment leaves the treehouse suspended between design and use: it is still a work in progress, but already a secluded place that changes what can happen between its occupants. Its planned privacy for a growing girl and its immediate concealment of Bea and Diego are different purposes, yet both depend on the same architectural fact—that the raised, walled space can offer distance from watching eyes.