Camp Airy Dining Hall
Camp Airy is a summer camp with a 100-year legacy of shaping traditions, fostering identity, and building lifelong friendships. Set within 450 wooded acres at the edge of Catoctin Mountain Park, it has long been a place of belonging and community for generations of campers.
Ziger|Snead Architects was commissioned to design a new dining hall that would reestablish the heart of campus life after the original facility was destroyed by fire. The new building provides a double-height hall for meals and gatherings, along with a dedicated kitchen wing for food service and support. Together, the two wings create a practical yet symbolic center for camp life, reinforcing the values that define Camp Airy’s enduring legacy.
Client
Camp Airy
Location
Thurmont, MD
Size
Completed
2025
STATUS
Built
The original dining hall anchored the camp with the daily rhythms of meals, assemblies, and shared traditions. Its destruction in the 2022 fire created both absence and opportunity. Rebuilding on the same site was a deliberate act of continuity, reaffirming the dining hall’s role as the camp’s heart while creating a structure that engages its hilltop setting and frames views into the wooded landscape.
At the top of the hill, the dining hall reinterprets traditional camp lodge architecture as a lifted, double-height volume. The shed roof spans timber trusses that extend outward, sheltering porches with open views to the surrounding mountains.
A continuous screen of vertical wood slats encloses the underside, filtering light and animating the form as daylight shifts. At night, the slated screen is illuminated from below, and the building reads as a lantern against the wooded landscape. The exposed structure defines the hall within, where wood, steel, and concrete combine to create an environment that feels both grounded and light.
The new building consists of two wings—the Dining Hall and the Kitchen—linked by a central corridor with entrances at both ends. The Dining Hall is a large, flexible space for dining and events, supported by smaller rooms along the east side. The Kitchen wing houses food preparation, storage, dishwashing, and serving areas, along with shared restrooms.
Design Team
Douglas Bothner
Mark Treon
Mike Bollino
Cyrus Lee
Consultants
Photography
Tom Holdsworth
Awards
Publications
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