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Creating A Place: Sojourn Lakeside Resort on Dixon Lake

Creating A Place: Sojourn Lakeside Resort on Dixon Lake

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In 2011, we received a call from Gaylord, MI.  Scott and Janice Lampert had purchased property in their hometown and wanted to create a landmark spot on the site.

“We have been so blessed by the land, we wanted to give back to the land” , reported Lampert. “This site is so amazing in its intimate northern Michigan way that we wanted to make it available to today’s recreational and educational user.”

Very influenced by retreat centers, spas and boutique resorts they have visited, the goal was to create a resort that would compete on the highest level for aesthetics and experience. “There is definitely a spiritual side to this place,” Janice Lampert explained. “Partly because of its history and the hundreds of visitors who came to this spot since the 1950’s, but by far, it is the soul of the land and nature that lives here that gives it it’s spirit”. (more…)

Creating “The Other Place”

Creating “The Other Place”

It is the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. One of the facts that keeps getting reported is that there are now 300 more restaurants in New Orléans than there were before Katrina.

Bloom Restaurant

This made us look around our city. Grand Rapids Michigan is seeing a stampede of boutique restaurants, coffee spots and general food-eries over the last few years. r.o.i. Design suggests this is the coming of age of our city, but also the evidence of a universal American lifestyle trend that says the neighborhood restaurant is being adopted as our “other place”.

Designers now have opportunities to help restaurant owners express the passion of the menu and the soul of the community in their interiors and façade design.
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