This design competition was for an expansion to an existing exclusive wine country Bed & Breakfast in Glen Ellen, California. The program was to add 9 cottages on a newly acquired adjacent property with additional shared spa and massage facilities. The project proposals were to be delivered to the owner with no opportunity to present the scheme. Our scheme rethinks the program’s “cottages” as GardenRooms.

This proposal offers an architecture of rejuvenation; an architecture which immerses guests in a lush sensory world. This sensory world is framed by the intimate relationship between the garden and the interior: the smell of wet cedar, the sound of flowing water, the touch of smooth concrete, the aromatic warmth of an exterior soaking tub, the cool fragrance of garden flowers. It is envisioned as a place of reconnection and of centering, which is close to the earth. Here, landscape and architecture are intertwined: the house is the garden, the garden is the room.

Our submittal distills our project into discrete forms of communication of the architectural ideas and packages them into a suitcase. These forms of communication were: olfactory, textural, material, and 2 & 3D visual representations. It was our intention that the client would unpack the suitcase and engage with the parts one at a time. Of particular interest, the collages present a gestalt of the differing qualities of the spaces designed to heighten the experience of the guest. In these possible GardenRooms there are illusory divisions between interior and exterior bathing, eating and sleeping areas.