Lake plans to offer the Resilience Training concept – which focuses heavily on 'exposing participants to as many different and unfamiliar situations as possible' to strengthen the body and mind – to resorts or hotels

Singapore-based wellness design firm A.W. Lake has acquired a 16-hectare (40-acre) property in Colorado, which will be the site of its new headquarters in the US. Located 20 miles outside of Fort Collins, the mountaintop property borders more than 325,000 hectares (800,000 acres) of national forest land.

“After spending almost two decades in Asia, I’m thrilled to be back in the US and to expand our business here,” said company owner and managing director Adria W Lake.

In addition to building a base for the company’s US operations, the site will also serve as a Resilience Training and Wilderness Camp, created in partnership with Colorado-based MAAD design and set to debut in Q2 2018.

MAAD are a design consultancy launched by Lake and Marc Gerritsen, who is principal designer, which focuses on resilient design as a “practical yet encompassing design approach for the 21st century.”

“More than focusing on sustainability and minimising our impact on the environment, resilient design assimilates and works in partnership with its surroundings to enhance the building’s performance and durability,” said Gerritsen.

The Resilience Training and Wilderness Camp in Colorado will feature fully equipped camp sites, a maker’s studio and gallery, demo kitchen and cooking school, outdoor wood-fire sauna and steam cabins, ice baths, and access to more than 350 miles of hiking trails, white water rafting, canoeing, skiing, snowboarding, swimming, rock climbing, fishing, forest foraging and wildlife tracking.

“For the last 20 years, we’ve worked with some of the world’s top hotel brands in designing their spas and wellness facilities,” said Lake. “With our move to Colorado and expansion in the US, we’re exploring a different approach to wellness, one that is based on our inherent resilience and evolutionary hard-wiring. We believe that creating places and experiences that strengthen our resilience and liberate our imagination, creativity, and curiosity will have a much greater and more lasting impact on our overall wellbeing and the future of our species – as well as our planet.”

Lake plans to offer the Resilience Training concept – which focuses on “exposing participants to as many different and unfamiliar situations as possible” to strengthen the body and mind – to independent or commercial developers with similar properties, but will also tailor it for resorts or hotels. The programme would be created and managed by MAAD and Lake said the concept could be implemented in hotels with access to natural spaces, but also in urban spaces.

Lake became interested in the idea of resiliency after being diagnosed with early onset MS in 2014.

“As someone who has been extremely active and physical my whole life, the possibility of losing my mobility and neurological functions was unthinkable,” said Lake. She took a six-month hiatus from work, and headed to the southern tip of Chile in the dead of winter to see how her body would cope with the harsh Patagonian winter and the extreme heat and dryness of the Atacama Desert.

“My exposure to extreme cold, heat, isolation, remote and unfamiliar surroundings strengthened my nervous system, re-calibrated my immune system, and restored my health,” said Lake.

“Our wellbeing is encoded in our DNA and we are inherently resilient,” she continued. “But our dependence on modern comforts and desire to control our environment have weakened our immune systems, robbed us of a good night’s sleep, and frankly – made us fat and lazy. We’re not built for constant comfort and homeostasis. When we expose ourselves to varying conditions and live in spaces that connect us to, rather than insulate us from, our surroundings, we feel better, stronger and happier, and that is the very definition of being well.”

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