A new approach to agritourism has architects integrating terrain and sustainably built environments to create inspiring journeys
The height of destination hospitality used to be a beautiful landscape—say, the dappled sunlight across the rolling hills of Napa Valley or Provence or Paarl, South Africa—viewed from a picturesque patio while sipping wine from grapes grown just there. Or a rural stay-over in a historic inn where a day of apple picking ends with sampling ciders and pies. Today, though, a growing interest in improving the food chain mixed with the rootsy glamour of off-the-beaten-track destination celebrations (and, of course, selfies) have whet an appetite for agritourism. And architects are feeding tourists projects they hope will offer sustenance, not just spectacle, tastefully layering the built and the natural environments to encourage participation in the land.
The Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture has inspired agritourism projects for decades with its interplay between farm, historic buildings, and its award-winning restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns. (Courtesy MASS Design Group)
The Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, and its two-Michelin-star Blue Hill restaurant can be looked upon as a founding member of this movement. Launched in 1996 in Tarrytown, New York, Stone Barns quickly outgrew its complex of historic dairy barns, vertically stacked around a rectangular courtyard and commissioned by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in the early 1930s. MASS Design Group consulting principal Caitlin Taylor helped spearhead a new site strategy in 2019 as the farm-to-table pioneer outgrew its operations. The new plan, as yet unrealized, seeks to balance visitor experience of the farm with that of the table. MASS worked with Nelson Byrd Woltz to flip the visitor experience from arriving at the bottom of the site’s distinctive hill to beginning at the top. As you travel to the restaurant, Taylor told AN, “You get this beautiful prospect of the whole property. You can see the livestock, the main vegetable fields, the greenhouses down below. You’re embedded in the landscape in a multisensory way that adds layers to your understanding of what’s happening there.” This recalibration finds material expression, too, in a new complex of livestock buildings. “The bales of hay that supply the animal feed are stacked around the north and west sides of the courtyard to block the cold winter wind,” she explained. “As the animals eat the hay down, the walls disappear. Spring arrives, and the animals are ready to move out to the pasture. It’s a living architecture.” Just like the Blue Hill at Stone Barns menu, the design is inherently seasonal.
AOS made the farm the heart of the Los Poblanos property, with surrounding vegetable and lavender fields. (Kate Russell)
New Mexico’s Los Poblanos similarly aims to cultivate for its visitors a connection to the land beneath its historic buildings. Nestled into the Rio Grande River Valley, Los Poblanos was built by the father of Santa Fe Style, John Gaw Meem, in 1932. Its Hacienda and La Quinta buildings exemplify Meem’s blend of Spanish and Western modernism, but it’s equally beloved for its 25-acre lavender farm, which provides an instantly recognizable backdrop for weddings and other celebrations—the lavender also is used in a range of beauty and home products. The kitchen, meanwhile, sources its heirloom and native crops from the site’s organic farm.
AOS Architects updated historical Los Poblanos in New Mexico for its owners, creating buildings and landscapes designed to attract visitors and special events such as weddings. (Kate Russell)
Los Poblanos is owned and operated by the Rembe family, which brought in AOS Architects to make the business achieve sustainable growth. “They were struggling with all these bits and pieces of business,” said Shawn Evans, who was a principal at AOS and lead architect on the project, before becoming a principal at MASS Design Group. “They had a vision that if they got the formula right, these four components—events venue, restaurant, hotel, and lavender manufacturing—would each strengthen the others.” As the buildings were set back in the property, the farm had been what he calls “the front lawn” of Los Poblanos. AOS made it the heart of the project: A wedding party, for example, can pick vegetables on the farm and eat them at the dinner while toasting the happy couple with gin distilled on the property with local botanicals, then practice self-care in the morning with lotion infused with the lavender immortalized in the wedding photos. Architectural interventions reinforced the farm vernacular, Evans explained, embracing materials like the corrugated material used on the historic barns. “We paid careful attention to the traditions that had shaped the buildings and landscapes we treasure here,” he said, “but we were not interested in replicating historic buildings.” The farm is modern enough, in other words, without turning it into a return-to-the-land theme park.
Superbloom designed 1881 Farm Park in Denver with an eye to the past and the future, incorporating existing structures and creating a landscape that will evolve; the site will feature a market and seasonal restaurant. (Courtesy Superbloom)
“One of the tricky things with historic sites is, do you take people back in time? Do you preserve it exactly as it is now? Or do you reimagine a totally different future?” said Stacy Passmore, principal and cofounder of Colorado-based Superbloom. The firm’s design for the ten-acre flex space 1881 Farm Park in Denver does a little of each. At its entrance, landforms make room for historically native plants to attract biodiverse visitors, from insects to local humans. “Colorado has a beautiful array of annuals and perennials that will grow under pretty harsh conditions,” said principal and cofounder Diane Lipovsky. “The experience will be a dynamic landscape that will not be the same in year one as in year ten. It’s meant to ground you in the prairie, in the waterstory, and help you see the beauty.” And keep you coming back, over the years.
A repurposed barn at 1881 Farm Park (Courtesy Claire Roeth/Rouxby Photo)
Existing barns and other structures nod to the settlement of the land by Henry and Anna Windler in the late 1800s, while a living seed library acknowledges more ancient cultivations. “Because of the history of dryland agriculture there,” Passmore explained, “we wanted to imagine a new model of park where food is part of the process, whether highly managed like a farm garden or with a cyclical planting nature, or orchard.” A new circuit of play spaces will be accessible by foot and bike and sustained by an on-site market and seasonal restaurant. “We wanted to find ways to make food become a contributor to the experience,” she said.
Guadalajara-based Estudio ALA completed a distillery in Jiquilpan, Mexico, envisioned as “an ambassador for responsible mezcal production,” according to founding partner Luis Enrique Flores. (Rafael Palacios Funciono)
Sometimes, creating a new destination can offer definition for local agriculture. Guadalajara-based Estudio ALA recently completed a mezcal distillery in Jiquilpan, Mexico, that aims to demonstrate the region’s deep roots in agave. “We envisioned the project as an ambassador for responsible mezcal production,” said founding partner Luis Enrique Flores. As guests explore the 7-hectare farm, they can learn about local species of agave and join in the harvest. The rows of agave plants are separated from the factory only by a timber screen facade and exposed structural walls, inspired by the vernacular wooden architecture of the Michoacán region. Nearby, a water reservoir both nourishes a biopond and botanic garden and offers a handy alternative to water storage tanks for fire safety. Tours conclude, fittingly, with a tasting and meal taken within a sunken pit in the heart of the mezcal palenque. “Agriculture, nature, culture, and production can merge into a positive, authentic, and sustainable example for this specific region,” Flores said. “We believe that spaces like this encourage a more respectful, rather than extractive, interaction with the land and its traditions.”
Rancho Almasomos, in Sedona, Arizona, is a 131-ranch designed by Mattaforma to provide hospitality programs with the least amount of intervention to the land. (Mattaforma)
Agritourism can thus offer experiments in philosophy. In 2021, Katherine Massey, a former Chicago-based floor trader, began transforming 131 acres of greenbelt between an extinct volcano and an active creek in Sedona, Arizona, into what she hopes will be the state’s first certified biodynamic farm. Rancho Almasomos includes plans to embed a self-sustaining, pesticide-free ecosystem in the land. That practice, informed by Rudolf Steiner and exceeding the green principles of typical organic farming, will be the attraction itself, said Mattaforma founder Lindsey Wikstrom, who was brought in to envision a site strategy that allows the ranch to do the most, hospitality-wise, with the least amount of intervention. Existing buildings from a former industrial farm on the site will be retrofitted, she said, “using structural tongue-and-groove paneling as a lot of the sheathing material, instead of plywood, so that reduces adhesives and reveals the structural nature as a finish.” New buildings will lack air-conditioning but will be enclosed, when possible, alternating between typologies of barns, greenhouses, cottages, and a wellness center with saunas and an oculus. Crucially, a bistro and farm stand will offer up the land’s bounty. “This project has brought the narrative of food into the way I was thinking about sustainability,” Wikstrom said. “Farm-to-table is so: Grow the trees, cut the trees, use the trees to build a building. But the environment I’m designing here is going through everybody’s body, not just going through their eyes. As architects we should consider how we’re putting things in people’s mouths and bodies. We need to build an appreciation of ways to give people an experience that exposes them to things that are typically hidden or abstract,” she said. “The built environment often makes all these systems invisible to the modern person.” Across the industry, architects are plating up ideas of how to experience food. “We’re trying to draw parallels between agricultural and ecological systems,” said MASS’s Caitlin Taylor. “Architecture is a way of making some of those invisible forces visible.” And making them worth the trip.
Jesse Dorris is a writer and radio DJ based in Brooklyn.
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