Public buildings are far to complex for this idea to be feasible. Small houses are about as far as tree houses can go and even these require a very large tree. As far as revelence I would say little to none. Have fun with your school project but if you are looking for knowledge useful when you get out pick a building type you would like to work on after graduating and explore this. Not much use for treehouse architecture out here in the real world.

^  Agreed.  As a one-of-many school design problem, it might be OK and fun.  But think of how that will look and sound at a job interview for a real-life firm.  As a research subject, it sounds a little flaky and childish.  JMHO.

You could start by researching the work of Terunobu Fujimori and then try to build upon Frampton's criticism of architecture as a primitive practice which has not moved beyond the ground plane - he says "architecture is as primitive as it ever was." It's an interesting topic about how and where we place architecture in relation to elevation (which now reminds me of the work of Ishigami - he treats elevations as diverse ecosystems to reevaluate the context and definition of skyscrapers). Anyway good luck!

A few years back I entered a contest to design a treehouse. Few of the submissions were houses using trees as foundations, so don't get discouraged by that limitation. Some were buildings encapsulating a tree, mine was suspended via a "mast" weaved into some trees, others were simple elevated with peloti into the trees and interacting with them.

Typical treehouses are boring.

carve out a 100 story building in the trunk of a redwood.