How Less can be so Much More: Tiny Houses and Summer Camp Cabins

14' x 14' Microhouse

“Better Living Through Simplicity” is a slogan I heard recently, and I thought - what a great way to describe summer camp! As it happens, it was not a tagline for camp. Rather, it is the slogan for the Small House Society – an organization founded in 2002 to “promote smaller housing alternatives which can be more affordable and ecological.” At the heart of the “small” or “tiny house” movement is, as the slogan suggests, the concept of simplifying life. As I read about this interesting take on modern culture, I found myself reminded of my earlier years… recalling a yearly event of my youth: Opening day at camp.

It always seemed like I had a lot to pack in my old camp trunk – and my dad always insisted that I’d over-packed. But year after year, that trunk, my Camp Pinnacle laundry bag and my bandana quilt comforter (homemade, of course!) would fit in the back of dad’s Volvo station wagon without even putting the seats down. We would arrive at camp early (so I could get a top bunk), unload my few items, and the adventures of the summer began. Talk about a simplification of life. For weeks, you live with the contents of your camp trunk spread out on 2 feet of shelf space and a couple of hooks above your bunk. Can you imagine living that simply as adults?

Members of the Tiny House movement can and do. Loosely defined, a house is a “tiny” house if it is less than 1,000 SF, though many people make due with houses as small as 80 SF. Can you imagine living on an 8 foot by 10 foot footprint? How do these folks do such a thing? Through figuring out the smartest way to use their space, spending a lot of time in the great outdoors; by using vertical storage and lofted beds, and by – frankly – getting rid of a lot of stuff they don’t need.

To be sure, this lifestyle takes commitment (and I’m sure it is not without frustrations), but tiny house dweller after tiny house dweller speaks to the freedom and empowerment they feel through challenging the social norms of housing-related debt and unnecessary material possessions. Once again, all of these things remind me so much of the purpose of camp, and how the simplicity of camper cabins support that purpose – the experience of nature, of simplicity, of carefree fun.

Turns out, tiny house dwellers draw that connection as well. As one blogger writes:

“When we were thinking about what kind of cabin we wanted, we found we were inspired by two things: the utilitarianism of houseboats, as well as summer camp buildings, with their exposed framing and unapologetic woodiness.”

(view their excellent 180 SF house on a tiny island in British Columbia here)

180 SF house in British Columbia

The aesthetic of “unapologetic woodiness” is found in many structures these days, not just little houses and cabins (read about WholeTrees in our post from December). Many people cite transparency of materials as the reason for exposed wood, embracing a “no frills” approach. I think most people would admit to feeling a certain comfort when surrounded by wood and trees – even if it’s just wood paneling in your grandfather’s den. As camp designers, we certainly are fond of incorporating organic elements of nature into our designs as often as possible. For people in urban settings, there are many tiny house designs that feature a more modern material selection, such as this concept plan that one of our architects completed for a 14x14 SF plot in Cleveland.

This simplicity of aesthetics, of living, and forcing yourself to work with what you have are lessons that can be learned both from tiny house living and summer camp. How could your life benefit from a little paring down? A little less clutter in your living space might translate into a little less clutter in your thoughts; simpler entertainment for your children might let their imaginations run free a little more. In this hectic modern world, it often feels that “time is money,” but wouldn’t it be nice if every now and again time got to be simply… time?

Kids Making Things Happen

All photos courtesy of Beam Camp

Floating Creatura

The title of today’s post is taken from the tagline of Beam Camp. Located in New Hampshire, the camp focuses on developing “capacity for craft, collaboration and compassion through practice of fine and manual arts, innovative thinking, design, creative process, story-telling, building and engineering.” At Beam Camp, staff members include professional architects, videographers, builders, engineers, designers, and creators. Campers have a unique opportunity to work alongside these creative professionals and develop their own creative skills. I first learned about this camp after reading an article featuring them on designboom.com.

Of their various projects shown on their website, I was most intrigued by the latest project, titled “Floating Creatura.” This project is a 20’-long, human-powered floating vessel. The vessel is propelled by a human-sized hamster wheel, bike pedals, and large metal paddles, and is entirely constructed by kids. This brings a whole new meaning to the idea of what kids can create at camp. Read the full article here.

Beam Camper Cabin

The camp’s program focuses on a variety of skills and activities that develop each child’s creative side. Located in New Hampshire on 100 acres of wooded forest, the facilities are also quite noteworthy. The camper village is constructed of nine wood-frame cabins, each with unique floor-to-ceiling screens -- a welcome break from the traditional camper cabin. While their highly-creative, camper-made projects catch the eye of design blogs, the camp also offers some of the more-traditional camp activities, such as swimming and canoeing. As both a design professional and camp enthusiast, it is exciting to see a camp combining the two interests to create a unique experience, helping to develop the next generation of creative thinkers.

Drinking the Dew and Tree-cycling

What will be the next great cabin design of the future? We can only speculate how the cabin, the iconic symbol of resident camps, will continue to evolve in the future. I recently read an article that reminded me that sometimes the simplest inspirations give birth to the solutions of tomorrow.

In this article, Italian industrial designer Arturo Vittori proposed a new solution to providing potable water. Inspired by the wild fig tree, the warka, Vittori applies the principle of condensation to literally “pull clean drinking water out of thin air.” The “skin” of the structure is constructed of a nylon or polypropylene mesh that collects water droplets as they condense from cold night air. In areas such as Ethiopia, with a day-to-night temperature variation range of 50 degrees Fahrenheit, Vittori’s design could produce up to 25 gallons of clean drinking water per day. From Vittori’s website:

Photo Credit: Warka Water

The design consists of 10 components, all of which can be constructed with basic hand tools. Materials include bamboo, mesh, polyester rope, and hemp wires. The top of the structure is equipped with rotating mirrors which deter birds by reflecting light. Next comes the structure which consists of a bamboo frame. Moving down the structure is the canopy. This references the inspiration of the warka tree, and provides shade to create a community gathering space. Ropes are used to ground the freestanding structure. The Warka Water 3.1 uses both fog harvesting and dew harvesting to collect water. The mesh captures water droplets from fog harvesting while the water collector captures water from dew harvesting. The water then moves through a funnel filtration system before it reaches the 260 gallon water tank. The water tank is raised from the ground to allow the supply system to use gravity to distribute the collected water. The Warka structures is built on a base of natural stone.

Vittori’s approach is surprisingly simple. “His solution, the WarkaWater tower, is as elegantly low-tech as a handwoven basket. Using only the basic principle of condensation, it could be the key to providing potable water to an entire continent,” writes Nicholas Derenzo in Hemisphere Magazine.

Photo credit: WholeTrees

Photo credit: Whole Trees

In the age of the “back to nature” movement, it seems a given that the future of cabin design will be inspired by nature. Clearly inspired by nature, are the structures constructed by WholeTrees, a Wisconsin-based company. WholeTrees specializes in using small-diameter round timber for structural elements in place of steel. This use of unmilled lumber in a new context offers multiple benefits. The entire tree is used in the building process, and one can certainly see how this idea and aesthetic would fit within the world of summer camp, bringing the natural beauty of the forest indoors.

Perhaps one day our cabins will be pulling water out of thin air, and structured around round timber from local forests. We will just have to wait and see what nature will inspire next.

Square Footage

At Typical Camper Cabin at Gwynn Valley, Brevard, NC

One design challenge posed to many camps is a question of numbers… and by numbers, I mean square footage. Kids today are growing up in homes that are bigger on average than ever.

According to the US Census Bureau, new homes completed in 2013 averaged 2,598 SF. With the current average U.S. family size of 2.55, this is just over 1,000 SF per family member. Let's compare this to 1950, when the average home was 983 SF and the average U.S. family size was 3.54, leaving 278 SF per person. Back in 2006, NPR's "All Things Considered" tackled this topic in “Behind the Ever Expanding American Dream.”:

"The big house represents the atomizing of the American family," says John Stilgoe, a professor of landscape history at Harvard University. "Each person not only has his or her own television — each person has his or her own bathroom. Some of these houses are literally designed with three playrooms for two children. This way, the family members rarely have to interact. And the notion of compromise is simply out one of the very many windows these houses sport.”

Now consider that the majority of Summer Camps across the country where built before 1960. Where does this leave camp facilities when compared to the expectations of modern campers and parents?

One aspect of camp where this is particularly evident is in the basic camper cabin. There is a growing desire for each new camper cabin to contain bathroom facilities. When you look at the average American home today, this is not surprising. Many kids have their own bathrooms attached to their rooms. How are they expected to walk outside to use the bathroom at camp? Take this private girls' camp in North Carolina for example:

"The bathrooms have every convenience of home (tiled floors, large showers, “power flush” toilets that never clog, double sinks, cast iron hooks for towels, shelves for shower buckets, and endless hot water from tankless water heaters that never run out of hot water). “ - Camp Greystone: Cabin Life

This certainly wasn’t always the case. According to Salomon’s book, Camp Site Development, published in 1959, as a “book intended as a guide to all concerned with the planning and development of Girl Scout camping facilities.” a single bath was only featured as an option for a “Men’s Cabin” for the rare occasion that a dad or boy would need to stay on site." Instead the book features several community shower house plans. This book goes on to outline all aspects of camp facilities. The cabin and shower house are separate entities. This was not only true for Girl Scouts, but for camp facilities across the country. In her book, A Manufactured Wilderness, Van Slyck notes, that the separation between sleeping rooms, and bathhouse facilities in the camping world pre-1960 was also a sanitation concern. Salomon echoes this saying that,

“the idea that campers can be kept clean by an occasional soap scrub in the swimming hole has been pretty well abandoned.” –Camp Site Development, 1959

Salomon goes on to comment that due to the high capital investment of installing showers in each unit, a central shower house was often the best solution. In the late 1950's, planning manuals for other camping organizations, such as the YMCA, echoed this conclusion, establishing the "best practice" for many years of camp design.

As designers, we are often asked what is the best practice regarding building cabins with or without bathhouses. Ultimately, this depends on your camp, your mission, and your program model. What ages are you serving? What are the challenges of unit living within each age group? How are you marketing your camp experience to potential campers? To potential parents? There are advantages to both designs, but with the right guidance, well designed facilities can make your camp the best it can be.



Adler, Margot. "Behind the Ever Expanding American Dream." Audio blog post. All Things Considered. NPR, 04 July 2006. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. .

Salomon, Julian Harris. Camp Site Development. New York: Girl Scouts of the United States of America, 1959. Print.

Van Slyck, Abigail. A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2006. Print.

If These Walls Could Talk

I read a blog post today that really got me thinking about an essential piece of the camp landscape… the cabins. In this post the author pondered:

“If only the cabins had a Facebook page… Names I’d never heard of clicked like and share because camp meant the same thing to them. They slept in those same cabins. They wrote on those same walls, and they tell stories that begin the same way. ...Too bad the cabins don’t have a Twitter feed.” -Stacey Ebert

This got me thinking about the history and origins of cabin life. According to Van Slyck’s A Manufactured Wilderness, it was not until the 1940s that marked the shift to permanent cabins. Previously many camps used Tents as camper housing. This was particularly common among organizations such as the YMCA, Girl Scouts, and the Camp Fire Girls.

Early Tents at Camp Becket

As ideas changed about the health and well-being of campers, cabins also changed. In most cases, tents proved problematic in creating the best environment for the camper. Tents could not adequately keep campers dry, and proved to be costly to maintain. However, many camp professional still agreed with the Park Service architect, Albert H. Good in his book Park and Recreation Structures:

“the [canvas] tent stands as an inherited symbol of high adventure, especially to youth.”
-Park and Recreation Structures 1938

The push for more durable facilities began to win out, however, and cabins in their basic form (permanent structures with four walls, a floor and a roof) became the new standard in camping. During this time Van Slyck describes the shift in counselor roles as shifting from “a passive force for good” to a more active part of the camper experience. This shifting view, translated to spaces that allowed counselors to closely monitor campers. However, in the 1950's there was yet another shift towards providing more privacy for counselors. Original cabins were often augmented with additional counselor sleeping rooms.

As I mentioned in my previous post, many of today’s camps were built before 1960. This period brought about a flux in ideas about the most effective cabin design. Many cabins of this era were constructed to house a single counselor per unit. In today’s world, this is simply not the case. Today’s best practice requires a minimum of 2 counselors per 8-12 campers. Many camps are faced with the challenge of campers that were designed for smaller counselor to camper ratios. Take Camp Ocakanickon, in Medford New Jersey for example -- their camper cabins were built to sleep 8. This requires a large amount of staff when the counselor/campers ratio becomes 2:6 per cabin.

Typical Cabin at Camp Ockanickon

As campers “needs” continue to become more elaborate… (think air conditioning, Wi-Fi, built in sound systems), I think it is important to remember a simpler time… a “back to nature approach.” The early tent cabins did not attempt to recreate the camper’s home environment. In fact they sought to offer an opposite experience for youth development. Van Slyck comments: 

“physical changes in all parts of the camp landscape demonstrate that perceptions about the needs of children where in flux throughout the twentieth century. As was the very definition of childhood itself.”

Today's building codes also add an extra challenge to these once simple structures, in many cases requiring fire suppression systems and fully accessible facilities for campers with disabilities. In addition, camper (or perhaps it's actually parent) desires to have integrated showers and restrooms in the cabins are creating not so "simple" structures. There are however many camps that are still building basic cabins without restrooms, showers, or even electricity bringing a whole new approach to "unplugging" kids for the summer. 

New cabin construction at Camp Arbutus Hayo Went Ha

In today’s world of iPhones, tablets, and ever increasing tech savvy kids, it is hard to say how the camp landscape, particularly cabins, will evolve to serve a new generation of campers. There is a camp with every cabin design imaginable; from fully conditioned inside space to rustic cabins, to tents. It's about finding the right fit for your camp to continue to serve a new generation of campers. 

Van Slyck Abigail. A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2006. Print.

Stacey, Ebert. "For the Love of Camp Cabins." American Camp Association. N.p., 28 May 2014. Web. 21 Aug. 2014.