The Lodge at Edgewood

Background

The renovation of Edgewood Lodge was completed in 2017. The $100-million, 154-room award-winning venue includes a spa and salon, 200-seat bistro and bar, ballroom, adventure center, kids camp, high-end shops, and a year-round, heated lakefront swimming pool. It is host to the annual American Century Celebrity Golf Championship Tournament, which in 2019 saw a record of more than 60,000 visitors.

The Challenge

Designer Eric Roverund, PLA, AICP, CDT of Design Workshop wanted to create a “mountain modern” aesthetic for the lodge, centered on the use larger-scale contemporary materials. “The exterior materials were meant to be secondary to the surrounding environment — beautiful but without competing with the lake and the mountain vistas that are the real feature here,” says Roverud.

The original concept used natural stone pavers, which proved to be too costly and created issues regarding the need for snow-melting in winter months. The selected material also had to be stain-resistant due to the use in dining areas.

The Solution

Mirage Porcelain Pavers proved to be an exceptional choice due to aesthetics, durability, stain-resistance, cost and ability to be custom cut and engraved for specific applications.

“You could anticipate there would be food and drink spills frequently, and the owners needed an efficient way to keep the material clean. We knew we could safely recommend power washing with the porcelain pavers, and the relatively thin profile of the porcelain paver allowed them to be easily snow melted during the winter months,” says Roverud, who designed the paver system to have a hydronic heating system embedded into the concrete slab under the pool deck and terrace pavers.

Available in color tones that reflected the natural variations in the local granite, the Mirage pavers presented a more economical choice than natural stone. When natural stone is used for paving, the product must be sawn on six sides, which could cost three times as much.

Design Workshop chose to use stock, 24×24 – Quarziti 2.0 pavers in River and Waterfall for the dining terrace and walkway to the lodge’s main entrance. For the pool deck and one of the adjacent fire pits, they chose to have the Mirage cut into 18 x 36 pieces. Custom treatments for the pool coping entailed cutting these in half, then laying them a half-inch apart to create the zero-edge pool drain, with grip edges cut into the material on the pool side. Rather than break up the look of the pavers with plastic skimmer drain covers, architects chose instead to have pieces of the Mirage custom-cut by a water jet to fit seamlessly over the lids.

“We also had the pool deck decals, the swim and depth markers required by code, engraved into the Mirage by a water jet,” says Roverud. “This let us create a seamless material finish on the pool deck.”

All pavers in the pool and terrace areas were laid in sand on top of a heated concrete slab. The pavers for the fire pit were set in the grass for a more naturalized appearance that visually broke up the spaces.

“The fire pit felt like a very different space from the upper terrace. It was nice to be able to take the same module (the porcelain paver) and just use a slightly different treatment to define spaces in the landscape,” says Roverud.

The Result

The region faced its harshest winter in nearly a decade when the product was being installed, and it did not suffer any damage. Design Workshop has since won several awards for The Lodge at Edgewood, including Placemaking Award of Excellence, Transformative Place Award, ULI Nevada; Merit Award for Design, ASLA California Sierra; Merit Award for Planning & Analysis, ASLA Colorado; and No. 1 Resort Hotel in the U.S., Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards.

“The property owners were so happy with the look and durability of the pavers, they’re interested in using Mirage Porcelain Pavers for other properties.” – DAMIAN SWAIN / BELGARD SALES REPRESENTATIVE