TechRepublic has a photo gallery on tree houses, which is quite informative and also features some quite unreal looking looking designs that actually are inhabited - as primary residences, vacation getaways and meditation retreats.
Tree houses seem to come in two forms: those perched on or attached to a tree (the environmentally friendly ones), and those being a living tree (the ones that ARE the environment). The latter are particularly intriguing, given that they create a house that lives and breathes and constantly changes. The challenge here would not just be that you might have to forever prune your house 
but also that you have to have pretty flexible and adaptable building materials - I don’t think standard window glass would cope particularly well with a tree-branch-frame that is constantly in growth mode. Another issue would be the growth rate of the tree, which could easily either rearrange your dwelling too fast or make you wait forever to move in (see top) .
But, as the second image from the top shows, such building also have nice advantages, such a structure being both nourished and nourishing its natural surroundings. Elements in this case include walls woven from vines, soy-based plastic windows, rammed earth and tile flooring, and radiant solar hot water heating. In theory, a household living in such a structure could use its wastewater and compost to feed the roots of trees, helping the walls and roof to grow. Health benefits include fresh air from the oxygen given off by the trees, which absorb carbon generated by the household.
[Check out also the Japanese tree house]
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