The new Max Scott Culinary Arts Center, a 17,367-square-foot facility at the heart of the Boys Republic campus, responds to the challenge of integrating the addition of an expanded culinary program with restoring the original Dining Hall designed by architect Myron Hunt in 1926.
Founded in 1907, the organization’s mission to facilitate the rehabilitation of at-risk students guided stakeholder engagement workshops for the project, from which two core design concepts arose: restoring the dining facility and production kitchen to reflect Boys Republic’s traditions and creating a modern beacon for the new state-of-the-art Bistro and Teaching Kitchen to reflect their innovative educational program.
Constructed with a budget of $5.8M, the facility draws design inspiration from Hunt’s signature Prairie School philosophy and the Arts and Crafts Movement through ranch-style construction emphasizing horizontality, arcaded porches, white plaster finishes and lack of ornamentation. The restoration of the Dining Hall includes terra cotta tile roofing, a plaster finish over a 1970’s CMU addition, demolition of CMU parapets replaced by wood eaves and new traditional double-hung windows. Functional simplicity is core to Hunt’s belief that nature act as the building’s ornamentation. The addition of the new Bistro and Teaching Kitchen adopts this lack of decoration, opting for a simple glass box accentuating horizontality. A frit silkscreen employed on the glazing provides shading and minimizes heat gain, while its falling leaf pattern elegantly expresses nature as ornament, paying tribute to Hunt in a 21st Century way.
Early stakeholder input included Chef Instructors and students that identified demand for a professional kitchen setting without compromising safety, among the following needs: an improved student serving area, an expanded bakery, an updated production kitchen, a larger loading dock, a new Bistro for donor fundraising and real-world food service education for culinary students, a modernized teaching kitchen, expanded storage, and restoration of an outdated dining area. The Teaching Kitchen, programmed and designed for Chef Instructors to demonstrate techniques from commercial kitchens, contains multiple culinary workstations for hands-on learning and a prep station for demonstrations, while an island suite invites collaborative cooking and a chef’s table supports instruction of plating and service.
Glass as a statement material makes learning visible to celebrate rehabilitation of at-risk students who may have felt unworthy and unseen before attending Boys Republic and provide a modern framework that glows with light, illuminating the activity within. Every space encourages making learning visible through glazed exteriors, connecting interior windows and operable glazed folding doors. A large window visually connects the Bistro and Teaching Kitchen as a central feature that increases awareness between students and diners. Its inviting transparency creates a sense of pride and fosters an equitable campus community. The Max Scott Culinary Arts Center embodies Boys Republic’s empathetic legacy of rehabilitation, while offering future-ready learning and a career technical education.
Narrative Sustainable Design Certificate:
Repurposing the existing Dining Hall as part of the Boys Republic mandate to preserve the overall campus history became a central design intent for the Max Scott Culinary Arts Center. The Dining Hall’s original architect Myron Hunt was an innovator with a reverence for the natural; concrete cast in metal forms with 20” air spaces allowed pipes to run between the rooms and utilized radiant heat. Drawing on these historic passive sustainable strategies, the new facility is a model of energy efficiency integration that uses effective daylight harvesting, new LED lighting, efficient HVAC, plumbing and refrigeration systems. Building orientation, along with sun control devices and a trellised overhang provides further passive strategies. The Title 24 form documents place energy performance at better than 25% of baseline energy requirements.
The New Addition maximizes economy through a flexible design serving multiple purposes by converting the Bistro to function for dining, board meetings, events and as a classroom. The acoustic ceiling features a printed wood pattern on metal panels instead of a real wood veneer to avoid the unnecessary use of natural resources. Indoor air quality is prioritized by specifying exposed concrete floors over materials that off-gas. The planning process used cost-effective software for sun shading, solar and wind studies. The project balances optimal thermal comfort between the HVAC system and the cooling loss/heat gain of the “glass box.” A silkscreen frit pattern on the curtainwall glazing provides natural shading and minimizes heat gain. This cost-effective solution maximizes long-term energy cost savings and doubles as an aesthetic and conceptual design element. The silkscreen frit pattern on the glass prevents bird collisions while still maximizing natural light and visibility. The passive shading strategy of the glazing’s frit pattern evolved to become the ornament of the building, representing nature by imitating falling leaves. A transition from the Bistro interior to the outdoor deck through bi-folding glazed doors allows for cross-ventilation, while offering direct outdoor access for events.
The new Bistro & Teaching Kitchen addition is designed to mitigate water waste. The design includes efficient landscaping with drought-tolerant, native planting that requires minimal irrigation, reducing outdoor water usage. Exposed downspouts drain to splashbeds and planters capture rainwater runoff, while a new retention basin implemented on an unused portion of the adjacent site captures water runoff from an existing asphalt parking lot, contributing to stormwater management.
The design team prioritized protection of existing habitats, plantings, and trees over demolition. Other sustainable site sensitivity features include Dark Sky compliance through the addition of minimal outdoor pole light fixtures providing downlight only. The lighting strategy for the new building was designed to only glow from interior lighting when the building is in use.
The sustainable design solutions integrated into the Max Scott Culinary Arts Center encourage users to embrace the rich history and traditions of the school and its architecture while building a future with conservation in mind.
