What a shame! I thought those were so cool. It's really too bad they couldn't be fixed up and used again. I would have loved to stay in one of those. When we went on a trip in 1998 we checked out the Institute, I thought it was such a great idea. I guess not many other people did though.
I stayed in the tree house villas back in 1995. I thought they were wonderful. We had 5 adults and a 3 year old stay comfortably. In the morning we would wake to the wild peacocks on our roof, deck & yard (a lot of them & loud).
It's a shame they are gone. They were one of the first condo/apartment style rooms on property. They had two bedrooms upstairs, a bedroom downstairs, a living room and a full kitchen. It even had an area to park your vehicle underneath out of the rain/sun.
This was one of the best places that I ever stayed on property.
Those plans sound so neat. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with these. Never got a chance to stay at the originals but I'm definitely going to try to get into Treehouses 2.0.