HNTB Dallas Branches Out Through Tree House
Unique project offers a chance for office to educate schoolchildren on the landscape architecture profession.

Last January, when the Dallas Arboretum put out a call for its “Ultimate Tree Houses” competition, the Dallas office of HNTB Corporation, a transportation engineering firm, saw it as a way to test some new ideas it was working on with Brad Bell, an architecture professor at the University of Texas Arlington. Bell and the Urban Design and Planning Group at the Dallas office, had been working with 3-D modeling software and developing ways to go directly from computer modeling to fabrication. Samit Patel, a senior landscape architect with the firm, also saw the project as a way to reach out to elementary-aged schoolchildren on the profession of landscape architecture. After all, what better way to capture a kid’s imagination than through a tree house?

HNTB staff and area school children hang leaves in the HNTB "leaves of imagination" tree house. (Photo by Brad Bell, University of Texas at Arlington Architecture Professor.)

According to Patel, the design team at HNTB first came up with a concept for the tree house called “Leaves Imagination” and decided that the structure would be created with Bell through the 3-D modeling software and go straight from computer screen to fabrication. According to the rules set out by the arboretum, the tree house could only be in the tree if it was not nailed or otherwise attached to the tree, and visitors would not be able to enter the tree house if it was off the ground. Because of these restrictions, HNTB decided to create its tree house around the tree rather than suspended in the tree.

With these parameters laid out, Patel says, the team approached the Windsong Montessori School and held “word play sessions” with third through sixth graders about their ideas of a tree house, encouraging them to think beyond the traditional “box in a tree.”

The house was conceived using 3-D modeling software and went from computer screen to fabrication. (Photo by Brad Bell, University of Texas at Arlington Architecture Professor.)

“What we found,” he says, “is that the children could imagine some good possibilities, tree houses that were not in trees, and that strayed from what is commonly thought of. But when it came to drawing a tree house, all they drew was four walls in a tree. The kids could think of the ideas, but couldn’t make the leap from concept to construction.” Patel noted that the experience provided the perfect analogy to what the firm and Bell were attempting to accomplish through their experiments with 3-D modeling.

After meeting with the Montessori schoolchildren, the firm set out to create its tree house with the idea that it would reflect the landscape around the arboretum and provide those inside the house with the feeling that they were in the tree rather than on the ground. The house consists of a series of walls constructed of metal, flexible PVC piping, and recycled erosion-control material. Patel notes that the design team chose the materials to reflect the fact that a landscape architecture firm designed the house. The walls open up around the tree allowing visitors to look up and see the leaves. However, Patel notes, the design team wanted to “bring the leaves of the tree into the house.” To accomplish this, the firm turned back to the schoolkids.

Photo by Scott Dahlberg of Moore Tree Care, a sponsors of the exhibition.

Native trees and flash cards
To collect leaves for the tree house, the firm went to several public elementary schools and presented a program on landscape architecture and native trees of Texas. According to Patel, firm members gave the children a general overview of the profession and related to the children by pointing out area subdivisions and playgrounds they had designed. They then discussed the tree house and taught the children about various trees native to Texas using printed flash cards they made for the classes. Finally, they asked the children to color laser-cut polystyrene leaves that were modeled after the leaves of native Texas trees.

These leaves were hung from the ceiling of the tree house, instantly connecting it to the larger community, and having the desired effect of bringing the tree into the house. Noting that HNTB was the only landscape architecture firm, out of 55 total firms competing, to be chosen for permanent display, Patel said the community involvement aspect of Leaves of Imagination definitely helped push the project over the top.

From abandoned stock pond to nature preserve
The Dallas office is looking to continue its outreach initiatives through the Girl Scouts, Patel says, by working with a troop led by one of its landscape architects. The troop is looking to convert an abandoned stock pond that currently sits in a local subdivision into a nature preserve as a merit badge project. Although the project is in its early stages, Patel is hoping that some of the environmental planners in the firm will work with the troop to consider the entire planning process, from what type of wildlife would visit the pond and what type of environment they would need to cultivate to the design phase, fund-raising, and finally to construction.

“We’re hoping the girls can come into the office and work directly with our environmental planners—especially our female planners—and see what kind of opportunities are open to them for this kind of career,” Patel says. “So often broader career horizons are just not presented—especially for girls.”

According to Patel, the outreach HNTB performed with the tree house project and that it is undertaking with the local Girl Scout troop comes from a firm-wide desire to give back to the community they work in and to grow the landscape architecture profession by introducing school-aged children to its possibilities. “The residual effects of this are an increase in work and name recognition,” he admits, “but the immediate effect, and what keeps us doing it, is the feeling that we are doing something as an office that contributes to the greater good.”