Basecamp Delta at Summit Bechtel Reserve

Every four years, as many as 50,000 adolescents descend on Glen Jean, W.Va., to participate in the National Scout jamboree. “It’s an unbelievable mass,” says Mark Sanderson, AIA, a principal at Philadelphia-based firm Disgau and the lead architect on a project that caters to that swarm of youngsters—Basecamp Delta at the Summit Bechtel Reserve, a complex of public spaces and structures that serve one section of the sprawling campgrounds.

The project comprises three main components: a headquarters building with meeting spaces and camper amenities; a flag plaza for ceremonial events; and an open-air pavilion for large assemblies, performances, and general lounging. The underlying design language “is really rooted in traditional camp structures,” Sanderson says, with the headquarters taking the form of an oblong barn-like volume topped by a gable roof and clad in weathered wood. What grabs the visitor are the window and door frames, outlined in eye-popping orange—“a wayfinding element for the entire site,” says Sanderson, and one that distinguishes Delta from the five other color-coded sites sprinkled throughout the former strip mine. Besides adding a visual identity, the orange also punctuates the rustic vernacular with a stirring bit of modernity, particularly in the pavilion, a more abstract form whose zigzagging ceiling under a flat roofline is a veiled reference to the mountain range visible from the raked hillside seating.

Off-the-shelf fixtures and a simple and frankly expressed roof truss in the headquarters complement Digsau’s modern-yet-timeless formal solution. The combination of old and new seems especially appropriate for the Boy Scouts, an organization that has been looking to find a way forward in a society whose ideas about gender and gender-exclusive organizations have been rapidly changing. The design of Basecamp Delta, says Sanderson, is intended “to remind us of our best selves from the past, while at the same time looking forward toward the future.”

Project Credits
Project: Basecamp Delta at Summit Bechtel Reserve, Glen Jean, W.Va.
Client: Boy Scouts of America
Architect/Interiors: Digsau, Philadelphia . Mark Sanderson, AIA (principal-in-charge); Jesse Mainwaring, AIA (project manager); Jamie Unkefer, AIA, Jeff Goldstein, AIA, Michael Goldberg, AIA, Kristy Kimball, Harris Ford, AIA, Rebecca Braun, Molly Baum (project team)
M/E/P Engineer: Alderson Engineering
Structural Engineer: CVM Professional
Site & Civil Engineer: Mead & Hunt
General Contractor/Construction Manager: Swope Construction
Landscape Architect: Andropogon Associates
Size: 14,000 gross square feet (pavilion and headquarters)
Cost: Withheld