Colorado Architecture Design #70 - Camp 88 by Munn Architecture - Winter Park, Colorado

My dad was a geological engineer and went to Colorado School of Mines and growing up he gave our family an appreciation for the history of Colorado and the largest industry in Colorado up until you know three or four decades ago the economy was driven off of mining. We both grew up in nature and so the thought of being able to live up here and also take care of it is very important. We discussed you know having a small cabin and we talked about that cabin being kind of in an influence of you know the old mining communities that were spread out throughout Colorado. And so to do that we knew we needed to kind of go back to Colorado's roots as well as our own. We did study a lot of the mining structures that were all throughout the I-70 corridor and throughout Colorado. All of those structures that you see none of them are brand-new they all look as though they've been there a while so that is the challenge or was the challenge for us to try to make a building that felt as though it's probably been here for a lot longer than it really has. It always impressed me the hard knock life that that they had to kind of endure particularly through the winters and at the elevations that they dealt with. You have to make a lot with recycled materials and because you can't afford to bring everything in. As cheap as labor may have been travel and transportation were overwhelming back then. Older vernacular older utilitarian structures such as mines or barns and things like that the buildings were were built very simply by a farmer. It wasn't an architect who was designing it. It was somebody that knew how to build a roof and they came together and figured out the easiest way to put it together. We wanted to have something that you know kind of fit more and to do that we needed to do more of a multiple building layout. He was so creative and he was very enthusiastic about our idea of making it a camp or a compound of buildings rather than just one big house. That allows other family members to not necessarily be all in the same space but actually enjoy the entire you know area itself. They don't have to be locked into one room in order to actually be all together. That's what these homes are doing and that's what this architecture I believe is very successful in doing. I would say that the specific designs of each building evolved and so that as we went on you know we went for in some cases a more refined touch and in other cases you know maintain the very rustic particularly exteriors. The barn house you know is different from this house. This is called the cabin you know then there's the bunkhouse and then there's the barn and the barn you know happened to be the culmination of of all of these projects all coming together and if you think about the barn in the life of a farmer or a rancher or something is where everything happens. We wanted a place to come back to that would be comfortable for Steve and I and also for our kids and friends and eventually grandchildren. We have the steep pitched roof over the stairway that I think we kind of think looks like a mine shaft or that angle that was in a lot of mines. I think the thing I like the most are the ceilings and the vaulted ceilings and the old wood. Did that come from the ice house in Denver that was torn down and so that's from only 75 miles away. The floors were from a rice warehouse in Arkansas. We found that a lot of the old growth forest and the old growth timbers that we've been able to use are actually stronger than any of the new growth you can get because we can't find the same size of trees that they could have 150 to 200 years ago. Even though the wood may look bad on the hour may look aged on the outside it actually structurally is sometimes even better than brand-new wood of the same diameter and the same size. Well in the bunkhouse I think the real reason we started there was Steve wanted an outdoor fireplace and then it grew from an outdoor fireplace to a building. One of our neighbors here had a nephew that had a farm in Iowa and he said he's got an old barn he wants to sell and so we had him loaded on a flat bed and bring it out and took those materials and repurposed them. Well Scott did a lot of research on barns in Colorado because barns across the country are built differently. We didn't want the scale to be so big that we felt lost which is why you don't see necessarily a huge floor plate but in that building it's it's more of an intimate setting. I mean it's supposed to be a nesting and for us it works. We knew when we got to the main house we wanted it a little more refined. We didn't want it to look so rustic. Jane and Steve with respect to furnishing this and putting in their life into this home is beyond what I could even imagine. A lot of what we talked about in the early design phases they were actually thinking about their family in the future. We're particularly proud of the bunks up in the loft because we created those little window nooks that the kids we can send the kids to bed early but they can keep an eye on us and make sure that the grandparents and adults don't get out of hand. The fireplace goes in the bedroom and the living room so you you have the fireplace in the bedroom which is always cozy in the winter. The wall behind the bed is again the hand-hewn timbers with the chinking which makes it look like it was once the exterior of the house and maybe we just added this space on. Well we needed a place to serve our guests serving whatever and we wanted a space that could be closed off so if the kids want to go up and watch a movie we can close it off and make it a little quieter for the folks that are downstairs maybe still in the kitchen you know visiting and that kind of thing. So it's an architectural detail that we thought was a nice touch and the grandkids think it's even better. To be a successful architect you have to immerse yourself in the area of where you're going to be doing work and I'm lucky that I get to do it in one of the most beautiful places in the world.