Pixar Director Building Fake Treehouse Home

"The three treehouses would be nestled into the branches of a mighty oak, just as in a Disney movie, with steps up the tree's trunk and a bridge to a nearby house.

A Pixar writer and director dreamed up this idea -- not for his next movie, but for his family's next house.

He and his wife bought 15 acres of secluded, vacant land in Lafayette and proposed a 60-foot-tall artificial oak tree with three treehouses. A suspension bridge would link them to a new house on the adjacent hill. An elevator would connect the house to a garage 25 feet below, burrowed 80 feet into the hillside.

Senior city planner Greg Wolff said he had never seen anything like this proposal except on the big screen. One of the tree's designers has created structures for Disney, according to the city's staff report.

'It's a whimsical project,' he said. 'Everybody who hears about it smiles.'"