Unbreakable Wooden Playhouse

For this project, we were asked to design a two-story wooden playhouse that would be manufactured as a kit and shipped to children and families all over the country. All structural connections were only allowed to be made with wax string. The structure was supposed to be fun for children, yet durable enough to withstand extreme vertical forces due to dead and live load, and horizontal forces from wind and earthquakes.

During the load test, our model creaked from the moving joints, but did not break into pieces. The joints began to expand outward in the middle top section and then started to bend from the 2nd floor to the top (the first story remained normal). We maxed out the weights available (160lbs), and then with the weight of 3 people pushing down, the model finally cracked where one of the holes was drilled for the string.