Location: Three Rivers, California, United States

Design Team: Waechter Architecture

Clubhouse Area: 724.64 m²

Campground Area: Approximately 96,720 m²

Completion: Summer 2025

Category: Hospitality Architecture, Campground and Lodging

Lead Architect: Ben Waechter

Project Team: William Smith, Reihaneh Noori, Judson Moore, Rand Pinson

Photography: Matt Kisiday

Design Features: AutoCamp Sequoia extends along the Kaweah River in Three Rivers, California, between Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Rather than placing a new resort on an empty site, the project reorganises an existing RV campground. Previously disconnected campsites, buildings and amenities are gathered into a system of roads, paths, tree canopies and landscape anchors. Waechter Architecture shifts attention from isolated objects to arrival, allowing guests to leave the highway behind and enter the river landscape by degrees.

The adjacent road offers access but also introduces noise and visual distraction, while the floodplain places firm limits on infrastructure. The masterplan uses concentrated parking, dense planting and turning paths as a buffer, keeping vehicles at the perimeter. Guests cross an entry court beneath mature oaks, check in and orient themselves at the clubhouse, then disperse toward Airstreams, cabins, tents, lawn, pool and river beach. The move from transport infrastructure to nature unfolds as a sequence of landscape rooms that gradually loosen in scale.

The 724.64 m² clubhouse is the sequence’s social and organisational centre. A broad horizontal roof rests on four substantial enclosed volumes, described by the architects as legs. Offices, services and support functions are compressed into these solids, leaving lounge, pantry, bar, retail and fireside spaces open between them. Concentrating structure and programme frees a continuous field of movement and sight, drawing the eye through the building toward courtyard, pool and foothills.

Communal life is not contained within a conventional lobby. When the expansive sliding doors open, lounge, beer garden, pool terrace and lawn become a connected network of sheltered places. Deep eaves temper the strong inland light and make the building feel closer to a pavilion in the trees. Cedar clads the enclosed volumes and continuous fascia; its vertical grain echoes the trunks, while warm timber, concrete floors, black metal frames and the suspended hearth establish a direct and durable material order.

What the project ultimately renovates is the campground’s social structure. Accommodation remains dispersed, yet paths repeatedly return guests to clubhouse, event lawn, pool, bathhouse and river. Solitude and encounter can coexist. Instead of reproducing a hotel lobby or treating nature as scenery beyond glass, the architecture uses one passable roof to provide orientation, keeping check-in, breakfast, rest, fireside conversation and preparation for the national parks within the climate of the foothills.

Design Team: Waechter Architecture is an interdisciplinary practice based in the Pacific Northwest and led by architect Ben Waechter in Portland, Oregon. Its portfolio spans housing, hospitality, wineries, commercial work, community projects and mixed-use development, with recognition including the Architectural League Emerging Voices programme and multiple AIA Oregon awards. Ben Waechter served as principal architect for AutoCamp Sequoia, with William Smith on the lead team and Reihaneh Noori, Judson Moore and Rand Pinson forming the design team.

The studio’s work is guided by clear organisation, material economy and the experiential qualities of buildings. It combines the durable simplicity of traditional construction with contemporary systems and ecological priorities, paying particular attention to how light, air, proportion and tactile materials support everyday rhythms. Collaboration with clients, consultants and communities is used to distil real needs into an architectural order intended to remain useful over time.

Across hotels, wineries, cafés and restaurants, Waechter Architecture treats service and generosity as foundations of the visitor experience. AutoCamp Sequoia follows this approach without relying on an exaggerated destination image. A legible arrival route, one open roof and a field of passable communal spaces give travellers orientation, pause and opportunities to meet.