Welcome to our third and final installment of the Great 2020 Road trip.

Since its inception, we’ve been lucky enough to help create and elevate recreation areas and resorts. Every day, we wake up and count our lucky stars for the kind of places in which we get to work and the wonderful clients we work with and want to support.

We put together this road trip through some of our favorite projects to inspire a little wanderlust and honor the resorts and recreation areas that make being in the great outdoors a profound joy.

Fall and winter are just around the corner: here are some more places to dream of – and visit. See you there…

 

MIDWEST

MINNESOTA

Hyland Hills Chalet

 

If your journey takes you to the Bloomington, Minnesota area, make sure to stop by Three Rivers Park, where you can also find the Hyland Hills Ski Area, where you can find abundant options for summer and fall play, with classes, events, and movie nights.

At the publicly-owned Hyland Hills, you’ll find our modern-day lodge, filled with our characteristic warmth, attention to detail, and unbroken views of the great outdoors.

Part of a larger project to create a better base-area experience for a highly used public ski and snowboard area, we’re proud to have created a world-class amenity for locals and visitors.

 

EAST

NEW YORK

Bristol Mountain Rocket Lodge

 

NY’s Finger Lakes are gorgeous this time of year. Bristol Mountain is the premier ski resort in the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York. While originally built for winter, it’s also a summer destination with a wake park, water park, and aerial adventures.

Bull Stockwell Allen was called in to create a day lodge to replace one that had been built in the 60s. But rather than replace it, we decided to renovate the existing lodge.  We loved that it captured the essence of 1960’s contemporary mountain architecture. The building needed a new kitchen and (people don’t “cafeteria” so we reused the existing building’s timber structure and opened up the existing kitchen into a state-of-the-art scramble dining facility. Taking its inspiration from modern day-lit market halls, it reflected the owner’s desire to offer patrons fresh, healthy, and local food options while at the resort.

 

VERMONT

If you’re lucky enough to be in Stowe, Vermont this time of year, be sure to hit some of our favorite projects. Vermont has always held a special place in our hearts. While he was doing his thesis at MIT, our founder Henrik Bull chose to do his thesis on the sites at Spruce Peak. It was just a base lodge at the time…and we’ve been working on sites there since 2006.

It’s easy to understand why: steeped in natural beauty, Spruce Peak is Stowe’s only slopeside destination, featuring luxury accommodations and year-round recreation. From zip lines to snowshoe tours, river paddles to rounds of golf, brewery crawls and wine tasting to performing arts events, everyone will find something to love.

 

SPRUCE CAMP

 

Stowe is a place to discover all manner of ways to play, from alpine skiing and snowboarding to mountain biking and fly fishing; from rounds on the mountain golf course to fine dining, Spruce Peak has something for everyone.

And the heart of Spruce Peak is the Spruce Camp Base Lodge, featuring restaurants, bars, private dining, and year-round conference facilities – a place to start and end your days of adventure.

As usual, we try to bring in history and heritage, terroir and terrain. But unlike the West and Southwest, there wasn’t a great deal of traditional mountain architecture in the East. So we looked to Vermont’s farming roots and to its round barns and post and beam construction and translated it into more contemporary mountain architecture where free-span timber trusses form the iconic great hall whose large windows offer dramatic slope side views of the resort.

 

THE ADVENTURE CENTER

 

 

Got kids? This is the place to bring them. The Spruce Peak Adventure Center serves as the base for Stowe Mountain Resort’s year-round children’s activities.

The Center features a three-story climbing wall and bouldering area, theater, arcade, café, and the resort’s daycare offerings.

Inspired by Vermont hardwood, its evergreen forests, and fall foliage, the building’s dynamic floor to ceiling windows highlight the activities inside and their relationship to Stowe’s majestic outdoor environment. We designed the 29,000 square foot facility for the maximum in flexibility: multi-use spaces evolve throughout the day and from season to season. (The center’s boot-up area even adapts into a movie theater with benches that convert to lounge seating, while the Canteen serves as the ski school food service in the winter and converts to a teen hangout by day and family dining experience in the evening.

 

ONE SPRUCE PEAK

 

Can’t get enough of Spruce Peak and Vermont? You don’t have to leave. You can live the remote work/second home dream at One Spruce Peak. Nestled between the slopes and Spruce Peak Village, One Spruce Peak offers 27 ski-in/ski-out luxury mountain retreats with elevators that deliver you from your front door directly to the mountain’s base, this collection of homes includes residences, townhomes, and penthouses. [It’s currently under construction but you can schedule a tour here.]

We got innovative in our designs for One Spruce Peak, maximizing living space and privacy: the innovative building design eliminates all corridors. The architecture was inspired by the powerful presence of Mt. Mansfield: the sloped roof and undulating façade of the building pay homage to curves and topography of the mountain beyond, while its color palette of natural wood tones, russet, and warm grays are directly drawn from Stowe’s autumn landscape.

 

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Omni Mt. Washington at Bretton Woods

 

The Omni Mount Washington Hotel and Resort is one of the last surviving grand hotels in the White Mountains, built of wood, and opened in 1902. It’s also one of the more historic hotels in the US, the site of the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, where 730 delegates from the allied nations met to regulate the international monetary and financial systems after the World War II ended. (This ultimately resulted in the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, now part of the World Bank.) The hotel was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

With such historic value, we were honored by the commission to expand the hotel. We were also more than aware of the need to create something updated while respecting the deep roots in the history and heritage of that great hotel.

We developed a design solution that wouldn’t detract from its historic style: we worked with the topography to lay in a 69-room addition that has the best views of the resort without impacting the visual impact of the building. We also created an architectural vocabulary that couldn’t be mistaken for the historic, but was still an extension of the underlying idea and characteristics of form and materials. To be completed in winter 2020, the addition includes the presidential wing with 68 luxury rooms, a spa garden, and a spectacular new rooftop terrace experience.

Rosebrook lodge

 

An on-mountain lodge is the perfect place to hang out for stunning views, any season, and the Omni Bretton Woods ski area and Mt. Washington Resort now have a new one: the recently-completed four-season on-mountain Rosebrook Lodge. When it fully opens, the lodge will include a coffee bar and fine-dining bistro on the main floor with the top floor dedicated to hosting special events and the winter season skiers looking for on-mountain dining and apres-ski.

This new 16,500 square foot lodge will serve as a special event venue and destination dining experience for guests at Mt. Washington Hotel guest and Bretton Woods, along with presidential range destination visitors. Located near the top of the mountain, and accessed via the resort’s new gondola. The lodge’s materials of timber, steel, stone, and glass complement the region’s rugged natural beauty. Ever aware of context, we drew our inspiration for the design from the mountain’s topography and skier traffic patterns into a ‘knife blade’ form that sits comfortably atop the mountain.

 

Enjoy the trip, and be sure to let us know what you think. (You can also follow along on Instagram @bullstockwellallen)