The Big Sky Ski Lodge designed by Nikita Troufanov at the Illinois Institute of Technology takes cue from the muscle system. Actions of tension, overlap, pushing / pulling are explored both formally and programatically. Working from coarse to fine grain, linear program ‘muscle’ chunks fuse and overlap and then tesselate into cellular aggregations. Spaces and structure are placed in a feedback loop where each informs another, evolving until a desired amount of coherence and unity is achieved.
Hospitality and patrol programs are overlapped and placed in spatial tension against each other through connecting views and geometry. Hospitality space is distributed on 3 half-stories that step up to gain views out into the valley, creating a spatial sequence with plateaus of specific activity and experience.
Site-cast concrete structure becomes expressed by adapting to spacial conditions. Alternating between slab and frame behaviors, deep beams become shallower until they fuse and become slabs, and slabs in turn splinter into beams, branching out and weaving through the building.
