HRDC Year Round Shelter - Bozeman, MT

The year round shelter is one of the two new buildings for HRDC (Human Resource Development Council) on a single lot north of downtown Bozeman, Montana. The shelter is replacing the old Warming Center in Bozeman that has been over capacity for multiple years in a row, emphasizing the city’s need for better infrastructure for the homeless community. The new building will drastically increase capacity, have separate bunk rooms for men and women, and include family suites. The second building on the site is the new food bank. This building has been designed by Intrisik Architects in Bozeman, Montana. The team at Hennebery Eddy, Comma Q Studio has worked in collaboration with Intrinsik on the site design and coordination of programmatic elements and building interaction between the food bank and the shelter. As a part of the schematic design process we organized an all-staff meeting with everyone at the Human Resource Development Council to determine what programmatic elements were the most crucial for the new year round shelter. The staff were divided into small groups with a variety of job experience within the group to allow for a collaborative conversation. Each group received a game board and programmatic playing pieces that were sized in relation to the physical size the program would occupy in the building. Their task was to determine, with the size restriction of the building, what elements should be included in the new shelter and rank their choices from most to least important. After the exercise we collected all of the game boards and compiled the information. After determining the elements the staff deemed most important, we worked with the ownership team to best incorporate them into the design of the shelter.