Title: Camp Southern Ground, Peterson Dining Hall
Location of Proejct: Fayetteville, Georgia
Project Completion Date: March 2017
Firm Name: Perkins and Will

Short Description: The passion project of Grammy-award winning musician Zac Brown, Camp Southern Ground, located on a bucolic campus 35 miles south of Atlanta, serves typical children, children on the neurological spectrum, and the children of gold-star military families. The first of 23 buildings in the 450-acre campus master plan, Peterson Hall floats lightly on the rolling meadow at the heart of the site, providing the first glimpse of the camp to visitors arriving from the main entrance.

Architect's Statement: The design purposefully evokes a series of vernacular architectural elements: sheet-metal utility buildings; gable and hip roof forms; a front porch and rear patio; and a brick chimney and hearth. The building reinterprets and recombines these references into a contemporary whole that is both aggressive and recognizable, yet reassuring and familiar. The iconic form serves as a strong symbol for the camp and signals to visitors upon arrival that they are in a unique and special place that transcends their normal experience of the world.

Due to the preferences of the client, the building does not use any exterior wood or wood framing. The exterior palette consists of cast-in-place concrete, exposed structural steel members, and a glass/aluminum curtain wall. The primary exterior cladding is a zinc shingle system that runs continuously across the angular roof, down the vertical exterior walls, and wraps under the “hull,” which angles from the elevated dining room floor and makes the building appear to float. At the interior, the ceiling of the main dining room mirrors the folded hip/gable geometry of the roof above and is clad with repurposed mahogany planks donated by Taylor Guitars.

As the first building on the campus, the dining hall not only fulfills its primary function of feeding approximately 400 campers and staff, it also is the camp’s primary multipurpose space. The building distributes program on two-floor levels—service access and kitchen are located partially below-grade while the primary dining room and dishwashing are located on the main elevated floor. Twelve custom-designed food carts distribute food from the kitchen to the dining room utilizing six dumbwaiters. Two vertical transfers of the dumbwaiters serve all 48 8-person tables. All eating dishes, utensils, and glasses remain on the main dining/dishwashing level with only serving dishes and carts moving from floor to floor. Folding/rolling tables and stackable chairs are stored in a room at the end of the north aisle of the dining room, making it easy to use the column-free dining space for a variety of activities and events, including musical performances.

Due to the variety of potential users of the building (typical children, children on the neurological spectrum, military families, and others), the main dining room had to be designed to both function as one large dining hall and multipurpose space, while still accommodating smaller groups with varying needs. The plan of the main dining room can be subdivided into thirds using temporary partitions, while the on-grade patio on the north side of the building allows a group to eat in a more isolated space if needed. The varied height of the ceiling allows for additional zoning of the interior space between more and less intimate areas. Additional space along the front “porch” allows for informal gatherings on the south side of the building.

The building is located in the middle of a broad landscape with limited opportunities for concealing the many “back of house” activities commonly associated with a food-service focused building. The design meets this challenge by arranging service access at the lower level of the west end of the building where a depression in the landscape conceals service access. Mechanical systems are located in the lower level and all service to the upper level runs through ducts concealed in benches that run along the north and south edges of the dining room. The mechanical system utilizes geothermal heat pumps and a low-volume displacement supply strategy to maximize comfort and minimize intrusive sounds. Concealed gutters and downspouts provide roof drainage. The kitchen exhausts at one roof penetration where a zinc-clad a wall screens it from view. All food waste is recycled via a pulper/dehydrator and used as soil amendments on the farm. The result is a highly functional building that nonetheless maintains a graceful appearance up close, across the broad landscape, and even from higher vantage points across the campus.

One of the primary challenges of this project was the desire of the Owner to organize the program on two levels and serve the dining room using dumbwaiters. The Architect worked closely with the foodservice consultant to design a kitchen process flow and custom food service carts that would make the use of dumbwaiters feasible. The carts are designed with five levels—one level each for family-style dishes serving a cluster of four tables and a 5th shared level for shared bread service. These four-table groupings make it possible for six dumbwaiters and 12 carts to serve 48 tables in less than 5 minutes. With the dishwashing room located on the main level of the building, eating utensils and dishes do not need to travel vertically, making the logistics of the building much more straightforward. Only carts and serving dishes move from one level to the other.