Colorado Outward Bound
Micro Cabins
Being part of the Design Build program was an unbelievable journey. In less than five months in groups of four we designed and built with our own hands two micro cabins for Colorado Outward Bound staff in Leadville, Colorado. The intensive process taught a huge amount of valuable lessons about how to design something that is interesting and that can be also built within the budget.
Everything started with deciding on a overall concept as a class then continued to designing individual cabin layouts, detailing unique details, doing material research, designing and prefabricating CNC cabinetry, prefabricating wall elements and finally building the cabins on site.
The building phase in harsh mountain weather conditions gave experience in using machinery, building high quality details and also improvising when things did not go as planned. 12 hour days for the final three weeks was exhausting but rewarding. I cannot even describe how valuable experience this was in making me a better designer and architect.
Timo Jyrinki, Louisa Sanford, Sidney Aulds and Chad Holmes
Design Studio IV, University of Colorado Denver
Instructor: Rick Sommerfeld, Scott Lawrence, JD Signom
Spring 2015
