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clearlake retreat.
While designing a wellness retreat sited in Clearlake County, California, it was vital to implore strategies of architectural interventions at three different scales in order to engage an environmental context lush with nature.
At the Micro scale, the integration of architecture and nature can be best understood through details and intimate architectural moments that seek to embrace and complement the environment.The Meso scale can be best understood at a human scale. We begin to understand architectural spaces in relation to our position from, between, and within different buildings. It can be our immediate experience as we circulate through space and can be defined as our fluid movement and flow—to, from, between, and in relation to the architectural and natural spaces. Lastly, the Macro scale is best understood as the genius loci of the created space. It is marked by the relationship between the architecture itself and its surroundings both immediately and in the broader context of the region. It is how architecture, or even how architectural moments begin to embrace, welcome, complement, and contrast the environment as a whole.
This project creates a cohesive and consistent atmosphere through a series of architectural moments which embrace the local environment, all with an aim to enhance your perception of, and relationship with nature. The separation of buildings on the site and the dispersion of programmed spaces created privacy by distance—even in spaces that are deemed as public. Each building, whether experienced in a group or alone allows for the opportunity of reconnection with the environment, nature, and oneself. This is achieved through relatively small-scale buildings that avoid feelings of overwhelming grandeur in favour of spaces that celebrate intimacy and privacy, as well as an overall connection with your surroundings.