The Society Hotel Bingen, Washington State Accommodtion Building, North American Architecture Project
The Society Hotel in Washington
Dec 21, 2022
Architecture: Waechter Architecture
Location: Bingen, Washington State, USA

Photos: Lara Swimmer
The Society Hotel, WA
The Society Hotel Bingen in Bingen, Washington confronts conflicting contextual drivers, responding with a singular and iconic organization. Located in the Columbia River Gorge – a National Scenic Area – the project?s site is near the waterfront yet separated from it by a series of industrial facilities.
Further complicating the hotel?s relationship to the dramatic landscape of the Gorge, the 2.57-acre property is within a residential setting requiring a sensitivity to scale and the privacy of its neighbors. Attempting to maximize the relationship of the hotel to its natural context while buffering its impact on its surroundings, the design explores the concept of the ?edited panorama.? Using the massing of the new hotel to edit out the middle ground view, the connection between the foreground hotel courtyard and the background grandeur of the Gorge is heightened and experientially linked.
The client?s program consisted of four distinct, yet related components: the adaptive reuse of a former school, twenty hotel cabins, a covered pathway, and a spa building. Approaching the renovation of the school with a light touch, the primary design intervention became the reorganization of the cabins, pathway...