Two years into caring for one campus, on what stewardship actually teaches a designer — and what I think Campus 2 could become.
Thomas Hoffmann · Pahara Institute, Lone Rock Campus · 2026
After Campworks, I took a role caring for the Lone Rock Campus at Pahara Institute — a building designed by OZ Architecture and built by Hyder Construction. Not designing it. Living inside a design someone else made, and finding out what it actually costs, year after year, to keep it true to itself.
That is a different education than architecture school gives you. I have learned as much here about how design and construction really meet as I did building a company from nothing.
Things break. Systems that anticipate that outlast systems that pretend it won't happen. I have come to think of this as a UI/UX problem as much as a physical one — the campus is an interface, and every person who walks it is a user.
That lens is the whole reason I think I have something specific to offer Campus 2 — not just a set of hands, but a way of seeing.
Right now it's a maintenance problem — something fighting the land it sits in. But we have natural drainages on this site that already carry stormwater exactly where that pond sits. Let it refill the way water already wants to move here, and it stops being a chore and becomes a reflective, meditative space for guests.
That's the whole method: root into the landscape and find what it's already offering, instead of imposing a feature on top of it.
Campus 2 is a chance to bring what I learned building Campworks — small-batch manufacturing, fast prototyping, product thinking applied to physical structures — directly to cabin and structure design, before ground is broken instead of after.
Same instinct that turned a backyard shed into a company, pointed at a campus instead of a camper.
Between what the campus is today and what Campus 2 could become, someone needs to hold the throughline — the design language, the story guests and donors hear when they're walked onto the build site, the connective tissue between operations and vision.
That's the seat I want. Less managing people, more being of service to the people already doing this work — Irma, Stacey, the whole team building Lone Rock into what it's becoming.
The land, the team, the work — it's enough that I can picture actually putting down roots here. Buying a house in Bailey isn't a hypothetical to me anymore. It's a decision that gets easier the more this place feels like something I'm building alongside, not just maintaining.
No pitch deck, no cap table — just a way of working I'm bringing to the ground I already stand on. If you think about land, buildings, and community the same way, I'd like to hear from you.