Lake Bountiful Ecological Retreat: Transitions from Natural to Built

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.