I was floundering in my 3rd year of Rice U. architecture when I got the opportunity to help design and build a treehouse on the northern coast of Honduras.  I devised a plan with classmate Hugh Brown that would earn me credit for designing and building a house from scratch. It was situated on a beautiful bay across from the town of Trujillo.

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We came up with a multilevel scheme, which included a main pavilion 8' off the ground, two flanking bedrooms 11' and 13' up, an entry platform 4' up, and a kitchen that was 5' off the ground.  All connections to trees allowed for movement.

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My little bedroom pavilion, reached by trap door, was upholstered in grass matting and had storage beneath the floor.  The bed frame was made with grass matting on a grid of sisal rope, which was also used to as decorative wrapping on exposed wood.

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We strung string in and around the trunks and branches of a grove of trees at the water's edge to visualize the 3-d layout. Dugout canoes were employed to float locally harvested mahogany out of a nearby forest for the frame and floors. Palm-thatched roofs on a network of barbed wire, complete with sheet plastic skylights, were hung like giant tents, and mosquito netting served as partial walls.  When the wind blew, the roofs would slowly heave like giant lungs, and the timbers would creak like an old ship.

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This was my first published work, garnering a page and a half in Lloyd Kahn's 1973 classic, Shelter, which can still be found in bookstores today.