ColoradoBuildingWorkshop received a 2019 Small Project Award for the Longs Peak Toilet project located on the Long's Peak Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park. Determined to find a better privy design, and a more humane solution of collecting waste, the National Park Service collaborated with ColoradoBuildingWorkshop, the design-build program at CU Denver, to re-design and construct new backcountry privies. The new Long’s Peak Toilets explore lightweight prefabricated construction and emerging methods of waste collection to minimize the human footprint in Colorado’s backcountry. The final design solution is a series of prefabricated structural gabion walls. Within the gabions, a series of thin steel plate moment frames triangulate the lateral loads within the structure while stones, collected on-site, are used as ballast. This innovative construction assembly allows for rapid on-site construction (the project was erected in eight days) and an architecture that disappears into the surrounding landscape.

The Small Project Design, an AIA Knowledge Community, present the 2019 Small Project Awards, to recognize small project practitioners for the high quality of their work and to promote excellence in small project design. This program strives to raise public awareness of the value and design excellence that architects bring to projects, no matter the limits of size and scope.

This year’s theme, "Together we...", recognizes projects that engage the idea, and incorporate concepts and elements relating to this theme. The theme was intentionally open-ended to encourage wide interpretation. Visit the AIA website to learn about all the winning projects.