The overriding design ideal for Marabou centers on the notion of stewardship. This idea references not only a strategy of sustainable built design, but also embodies a careful process of preservation, including a Western ideology and aesthetic and the sharing and nurturing of a true ranching lifestyle. The most tangible manifestation of this notion is the requirement that the buildings tell the same stories of the original, authentic ranch structures. They do so by way of their form, massing, adjacency, material, and detail.
The main lodge program will be contained within a grouping of ranch-scaled structures. Rather than combining program elements into a single, more resort-like and imposing structure, the ranch compound strategy dismantles the monolith and lightly scatters the program upon the landscape. The buildings become smaller, less imposing, more authentic and more energy efficient. The strategy illustrates sensitivity to the land, with less conditioned space and results in rooms that are both warm and open to the outside.
As the path through the trees meanders away from the lodge compound, the cabins are encountered along the river. Sized to accommodate their varied uses, the cabins are noticeably unimposing. With low and long ridge lines, they blend with the landscape and present the river with deck and terrace. The use of warm and time worn materials will make them familiar to their setting and comfortable in their familiarity. Here, too, the outside is more valuable than the structure, yet the buildings have a quietly refined presence, one that is characteristic of fishing and camping traditions.
The entry attempts to reuse familiar ranching components in an exciting re-enactment of vernacular ranch design and preserves buildings from the immediate locale. They are brought together just off the beaten path to again form a "place" along the country road.