Project Description
This project won a 2016 AIA Small Projects Award.
Campus Housing / Merit
When the Kansas City, Mo., firm El Dorado designed this 48-bed bunkhouse project for a local Girl Scout camp, they faced an especially tight budget. So they tried to use as many existing resources as possible, placing the two bunkhouses close to a main road to tap into city utilities. The site also adjoins the camp’s longtime dining hall, where many of the girls’ activities take place. “We tried to create a little community of buildings,” says principal Douglas Stockman, AIA, whose own daughter is a Girl Scout.
Inexpensive materials, deployed cleverly, dress up the project’s basic forms. “I love it because of the simplicity and color,” said one judge. Alternating shades of corrugated metal siding contrast with cement-board panels painted the bright hues of Girl Scout cookie boxes. Interior light fixtures came from a designer (and former Girl Scout) found on Etsy.com. And the bunk beds were designed and built by students in a Kansas State University studio, taught by Stockman and fellow El Dorado principal David Dowell, AIA. —Meghan Drueding