place: Leavenworth, WA
program: site and building design for outdoor spa/water recreation facility. includes hydrotherapy circuits with pools and saunas, two welcome buildings, and community-based gathering spaces.

The Springs is designed as a natural sanctuary within the beauty of Leavenworth, blending its greater Cascade Mountain surroundings with the Bavarian-inspired design of its local town context. The site design features an outer circuit of hot, warm, and cold pools, paired with saunas that provide places for retreat. 

The indoor and outdoor gathering spaces are reflective of the Springs’ mission to foster mountain culture and community through accessible and restorative outdoor spa experiences. Differing scales of the gathering and spa-related spaces emphasize that shared outdoor experiences restore our physicality and foster social wellbeing. Pools and saunas are designed for small-group intentionality while the central FirePlace and the semi-covered patios of the Welcome Buildings are designed as gathering spaces for community-based rejuvenation.

The welcoming buildings for this new hot-spring outdoor recreation facility fit within the town’s Bavarian-Alpine inspired context and reference “vierseithof” principals of rural barn designs. Attention to craftsmanship, the build-process, and the material selection aim to connect the project to its place - both the mountain-rich context of the Cascade Mountains, and the Old World Bavarian-inspired Leavenworth context. These two welcome buildings meld simple and natural design elements such as traditionally-applied stucco, hand-carved wooden gutters, tiered scrolled fascia, arched wood windows, with an exposed heavy-timber structure, site-native boulders and plantings to develop their own locally driven vernacular.