The Treehouse Project was created during a STaC senior seminar called "The Natural History of Wood", taught by Hugh Crawford, Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture, and recipient of the 2011 USG Regent's Teach Excellence Award. Throughout the seminar, students looked at trees and forests as biological, ecological, technological, cultural, mythic and literary entities. The students decided to build a tree house to serve as a prompt or provocation to think about trees, forests and small structures in relation to liminal space, sustainable building, children's literature and the popular imagination.