Black Butte Ranch Lodge Renovation
Architect: THA
Client: Brooks Resources
Location: Sisters, Oregon
Completion: 2015

When Black Butte Ranch Lodge first opened a little over 40 years ago near Sisters, Oregon, it served as a home for locals and a destination for travelers heading to the city’s namesake, the Three Sisters—three volcanic peaks over 10,000 feet tall. Originally a cattle and horse ranch in the 1880s and then a summer escape for a San Francisco family, the 1,800-acre Black Butte Ranch exchanged hands several times before being sold to Brooks Resources in 1970.

Now over four decades have passed and the Lodge is set to go undergo an $11.5 million renovation. Oregon-based firm THA Architecture is set to design a new 15,000-square-foot pool complex—which includes a swimming pool, a pool house, a recreation center, and updated native plant landscaping by Walker Macy Landscape Architects. Located at the center of the ranch, the new design takes some inspiration from barns with long rooflines, providing sweeping open vistas of Mount Washington and the Cascades beyond. The plan also calls for special light fixtures to minimize light pollution, radiant heating in the pool house, a bistro powered by a geothermal heat pump, bike parking spaces, daylight harvesting, and other sustainable features. Completion is estimated for 2015.