One&Only Moonlight Basin
One&Only Moonlight Basin by Olson Kundig is a rare luxury retreat where the architecture steps back and lets the dramatic Montana scenery take your breath away.
In Big Sky, Montana, the northern Rocky Mountains rise in dramatic peaks above wide green valleys, dense pine forests and alpine meadows. Here, you’ll find the new One&Only Moonlight Basin, designed around the premise that the landscape is the experience. With the striking snow-capped silhouette of Lone Peak rising over 3,400 metres, the setting is both spectacular and rugged – and Olson Kundig’s architecture responds with a luxurious yet light touch on the land.
Tom Kundig, principal at Olson Kundig, describes the approach as “a framework to experience the most important reason you’re there, which is that landscape”. The resort’s main lodge, central ski lodge, restaurant, spa and kids area are positioned among the forest, each offering a sequence of views that alternately reveal and conceal the mountains.
“As you approach the valley, Moonlight Basin, you’re entering through the forest, and as you turn around, that’s when Lone Peak makes its appearance,” Kundig says. Inside, the architecture and furniture are purposefully restrained. “The interiors are intentionally designed in a way that is very luxurious, but it’s also intended to be somewhat quiet to your experience of what’s happening outside of those windows.” He describes the glazing as a way to open the building to the surroundings so “you just feel the interior space rushing out to heighten the experience of the place, of that landscape.”
To embed the building further into the landscape, the materiality draws on the local environment, using native, thermally modified timber from Delta Millworks. For the siding, smooth Western red cedar in Delta Black brings a deep, grounded tone, while Hemlock VG in a custom finish adds warmth to the ceilings and soffits. Kundig notes that the beauty of Western red cedar is that it “weathers well in our climate” and helps to reinforce the connection between interior refuge and the mountainous world beyond.
This is architecture designed not to compete with the scenery but to sharpen our awareness of it. “If the architecture is doing its job, in a sense it’s retreating,” Kundig says. This ambition is revealed in both the smallest details and the biggest views – creating a place where, as he puts it, “you are blown away by the landscape” before gradually realising that the architecture helped make that experience possible.
