Scene on Campus

Splt level, grt vu

Not your everyday treehouse.

When Griffin Collier ’13 was growing up on Long Island, New York, he wanted a treehouse. Badly. But his wish didn’t come true until he started building it himself, in the forest Yale owns in northeastern Connecticut.

For the past two years, Collier, an architecture major, has spent almost every free moment designing, raising money (more than $10,000, through Kickstarter), and enlisting the aid of a small army of volunteer student workhorses and engineering and construction consultants—all in the service of the treehouse shown here, still in construction when this photo was taken in late July. It’s named the Lau Treehouse, after its largest donors (Claire Woo ’01MBA and her husband, Gordon Lau), and located in a sugar maple at the Yale-Myers Forest, about an hour’s drive from campus. The split-level, aluminum-framed, wood-floor structure can hold 12 adults at least 10 feet above ground level.

Collier made the treehouse as “a study in designing with nature,” but “it’s basically for recreation—a special place in the trees.” Unfortunately, he still won’t have it as his own special place: the treehouse was slated to be dedicated in late August, shortly before Collier’s departure for a job in London.

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