Brasada Pool
Location: Bend, OR
Photography: Cheryl McIntosh
The terraced layout allows multiple activities to coexist using elevation changes to define distinct outdoor rooms and create natural sight lines between spaces. An upper lawn terrace is proportioned and oriented for formal wedding ceremonies, with the Cascade views serving as a natural backdrop and the lower pool deck and lawn visible below, creating a layered sense of occasion and spatial depth. The upper lawn can flex between intimate gatherings and larger ceremonies while maintaining an elegant, understated character that feels rooted in the site.
At the heart of the design, a simple rectilinear lap pool and elevated spa anchor the pool terrace, offering clean geometry and resort-caliber amenities that serve daily use by Brasada residents and guests. The elevated spa creates a subtle focal point and provides a secondary vantage for mountain views, while the lap pool's linear form reinforces the site's axial organization and frames circulation between upper and lower zones.
The Brasada Ranch Pool reimagines the conventional resort amenity as a multi-functional event landscape, serving simultaneously as an adult pool retreat and the community's primary outdoor wedding and private event venue. Sited on a high plateau within Brasada Ranch with sweeping views of the Cascade Range, the design organizes a program of social, service, and recreational spaces across a series of carefully graded terraces that respond to the existing topography while maximizing visual connection to the surrounding high-desert landscape and mountain horizon.
The upper terrace overlook features a fire pit and intimate gathering zone elevated above the main pool deck, creating a place for smaller groups to gather day or night while still engaging with the broader social activity below. This terrace extends the usable event footprint and provides a secondary focal point that balances the composition.
The lower lawn, graded and sized to accommodate 150-person receptions, steps down from the pool terrace and connects the upper ceremony lawn to the broader Brasada landscape. This flexible event space is framed by native high-desert plantings and anchored by views of the Cascades, allowing it to function as both an active reception zone and a visual foreground that ties the designed spaces back to the site's natural character.
By organizing the program across multiple elevations and embedding event infrastructure into the permanent landscape, the Brasada Ranch Pool demonstrates how resort amenities can serve daily recreation and special occasions with equal elegance, creating a destination that feels celebratory and grounded in Central Oregon's terrain.
