Lake Bountiful Ecological Retreat: Transitions from Natural to Built
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Abstract
Tastefully Simple is a food designer and distribution company with its headquarters in Alexandria, MN.
Aaron Olsen did a landscape architecture thesis project last year for this corporation master planning a
convention / retreat area around a lake it purchased near its headquarters call Lake Bountiful. I will work to
resolve Tastefully Simple needs for the building elements and propose designs for those elements. A major
part of this project will be utilizing the existing farmstead. The attempt will be to bring together building
and landscape, sustainability with site, people with nature and give Tastefully Simple a new icon.
The design is intended to be much more than just
a convention center for Tastefully Simple but also a
nature preserve that the entire community can be inspired
by, learn from and interact with. The term “active
preserve” will be called upon many times throughout the
project as a way to describe the project. The design will
try and capture this term by restoring and preserving the
nature state of the site while also fulfilling the functional
needs of a major corporation and allowing people to
interact with the site.