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Architects and planners (from left) Christina Lathrop, Mauricio Castro, Marc Newman, David Carrico, Barry Yoakum, Todd Walker, Mark Horrocks, Andy Gross and Tucker Davis are the architectural team for the new Habitat for Hope retreat in Shelby Forest.

Landscape architect Chris Lathrop of Florida hunches over a large sheet of tracing paper in a barn at Shelby Forest and announces to colleagues, “I think we’re ready for color.”

Planner Tucker Davis brings a box of colored markers to her.

At a nearby table, an electric fan blows the heat and bugs away from designer/illustrator David Carrico of St. Louis, who’s rendering what the site might look like when construction is done at 2041 Locke-Cuba Road.

Planners Mauricio Castro of Orlando and Marc Newman of Memphis team to create a more detailed site plan at another table.

The professionals all worked late into the night for three days during the intensive design marathon.

And across the nation, awaiting their turn, are eight distinguished architects who’ll design the buildings.

Even a barn-raising takes planning.

Like 19th-century farmers, volunteer planners, architects and landscape architects are converging from around the country to design a project in Shelby Forest.

Instead of a barn, it’s a wooded retreat for families of children with cancer and other serious illnesses.

“The reality is, there will be nothing like this in the United States,” said Mark Horrocks, co-founder of Habitat for Hope.

The faith-based nonprofit houses families whose children are being treated in area hospitals.

The idea is to not just provide housing, but a haven so beautiful, loving and fun that it restores the stressed families.

For several years, Habitat for Hope has sheltered more than 200 families from 27 states and 25 countries in a single brick home set amid 48 beautiful, wooded acres.

Now it is expanding.

In what it calls “The Barn Raising Project,” the organization plans to use voluntarism to erect eight cabins, a “village center,” two staff residences, a chapel, hiking trails and an equestrian center.

The plans hit overdrive last winter when Davis, Habitat for Hope’s development director and former planner for Looney Ricks Kiss architects, enlisted his old friend Barry Yoakum.

Yoakum and Todd Walker are principals in the architecture firm archimania, whose modern designs have drawn so much acclaim in recent years.

Walker and Yoakum aren’t merely going to design one of the eight cabins; they’ve recruited seven other architects from across the nation to design the other seven cabins.

“The kids’ families are from all over,” Walker said. “The thought is to bring a team of architects from all over. … Let’s try to keep the architecture diverse.”

But consistency in materials and a fidelity to keeping the project natural and simple should prevent the cabins from looking like a mish-mash of designs.

Each architect, including Walker, is a fellow through design in AIA (American Institute of Architects).

The firms are Marlon Blackwell Architect, Fayetteville, Ark.; Randy Brown Architects, Omaha, Neb.; Robert Gurney Architect, Washington, D.C.; Frank Harmon Architect, Raleigh, N.C.; Lightroom (William J. “Bill” Carpenter), Atlanta; Pugh+Scarpa Architecture (Larry Scarpa), Santa Monica, Calif.; and MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects (Brian MacKay-Lyons), Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Their charge is not to create work that’s idealistic (expensive) or egotistical.

“It’s about community and families and giving them peace,” Walker said. “All the architects signed up without a fee in mind.”

Yoakum said one goal is to create affordable buildings, adding, “This is about grassroots architecture.”

Habitat for Hope has not decided yet whether to gradually raise funds to build in phases or to raise enough money to build much of the project at once, Horrocks said.

– Tom Bailey Jr.: 529-2388

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