Designing for Belonging: The Ilfeld High Mountain Lodge Vision
Tucked into the Sierra Nevada’s sweeping granite slopes and fresh, pine-scented air is a beautiful, historic, nearly 90-year-old stone lodge on 23 acres of conservation land—at an elevation of over 7,200 feet.
This lodge — Ilfeld High Mountain Lodge — will become a home base for Gateway Mountain Center’s nature-based, therapeutic retreats for young people. We’re renovating and reimagining this lodge to be not only a historical structure but also a heart-space for growth, belonging, connection, and community.
At the center of this vision is architect Lisa Gelfand, principal of Gelfand Partners Architects, a firm with deep-rooted experience in community-centered, sustainable design. For Gelfand, this project is more than just another addition to her portfolio. It’s personal.
“My teenagers and I found peace together in the mountains, skiing during difficult times,” Gelfand says. “That environment demanded our full attention, and that helped both of us heal. I saw firsthand how powerful time in nature could be for a young person’s development.”
Gelfand’s vision is intentionally subtle. The lodge will be like a canvas, and young people’s hopes, fears, and dreams — their authentic, whole selves — will be the paint.
Pictured: Lisa Gelfand, Gelfand Partners Architects
Creating healthy spaces
For decades, Gateway Mountain Center has brought together the transformative power of human connection and nature immersion to help young people learn, heal, and thrive. As young people do this important work, the lodge will be a sanctuary that they can return to for rest — and a sense of home, safety, and belonging. With intentional design, the lodge will be an open, compassionate space where young people can nurture their self-awareness and ignite their passion for self-discovery through the authentic relationships that they build during our programs.
The vision for the lodge resonates deeply with Gelfand, who throughout her career has reconceived spaces for public good, from San Francisco public schools to community centers and affordable housing. Her approach to reimagining the lodge began with her immersion in Gateway Mountain Center’s programs and its values, the latter of which are similar to her own: Every person should feel included in the spaces they inhabit. Gelfand says that this inclusion starts with the senses — how light, air, and tangible materials flow together.
“We begin with characteristics of healthy spaces,” Gelfand says. “Natural daylight, fresh air, and healthy materials. Spaces are alive when the sun goes across the sky and does something different to a space.”
Gelfand’s sustainable design principles are not simply about saving energy (though they do that, too), but about human sustainability—a space’s ability to uplift, comfort, and inspire those within it.
Watch the above video for a virtual tour of the renovations coming to Ilfeld High Mountain Lodge, guided by architect Lisa Gelfand.
Designing for belonging
Gelfand’s vision is intentionally subtle. The lodge will be like a canvas, and young people’s hopes, fears, and dreams — their authentic, whole selves — will be the paint.
“I hope the space operates on a more subliminal level,” says Gelfand. “The point is that the space can embody a sense of community. And even when kids are there for a short time, you want to intensify the feeling of being together. One of the challenges for the lodge is to make that feeling really accessible to all the kids.”
That ethos informs the upcoming lodge’s focus on accessibility, especially as one of few ADA-accessible lodges in the area.
One striking design change to foster belonging in community with others is the lowering of the lodge’s dining room floor so that it aligns seamlessly with the living room. In a typical renovation, ramps or lifts might visually distinguish rooms. But for Gelfand, that approach wasn’t enough.
“We didn’t want visual or physical barriers in the heart of Gateway Mountain Center’s programs,” says Gelfand. “This space is where the kids come together. There should be no separation.”
Tearing down barriers opens new paths that make the space more intuitive and welcoming.
“We’re creating a new kind of entry experience, so kids don’t have to come through a boot room or kitchen to enter,” Gelfand says with a laugh.
The lodge’s new design will also include a courtyard that physically and emotionally ties the lodge’s campus together, creating the feeling of an outdoor living room.
“We look at dining and living rooms with the sort of primacy of where kids come together,” Gelfand says. “That’s a sacred space.”
Architectural rendering of the interior living and dining area of Ilfeld High Mountain Lodge.
Expanding and deepening nature-based experiences
The lodge isn’t an island unto itself — it’s the launchpad for something greater: immersive, often first-time experiences in nature for many young people, from across California and beyond.
“When I worked with youth in affordable housing projects, I met kids who had never crossed the Bay Bridge,” Gelfand recalls. “The lodge will give more kids access to experiences that magnify California’s incredible natural settings. It’s extremely exciting.”
That’s the magic that Gateway Mountain Center leans into every day — an experience that the lodge will enhance. The lodge also brings together and supports Gateway’s dedicated staff members, who help ground young people as they achieve their healthiest selves.
Moving forward
The lodge’s natural and tactile history — embodied in the rustic craftsmanship, hand-cut timber, and embedded rocks from the mountainside on which the foundation sits — won’t be erased.
“It’s really important to us that any new building is something that strengthens the existing building, too — that the environment reflects the new and old together,” says Gelfand. “We’re creating a unified campus, so that what comes out in the end is bigger than either piece by itself.”
Just as the lodge’s renovation will honor the past and chart a new path forward, its programming will encourage young people to look inward into their own pasts and move forward with healing through connection to self, community, and the natural world.
building community legacy together
The renovation of Ilfeld High Mountain Lodge is more than an architectural project — it’s a community legacy.
The lodge is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to provide space for more young people to achieve emotional, physical, and social well-being, a place where transformation happens one young person at a time.
In a world where disconnection is growing, Ilfeld High Mountain Lodge offers connection, belonging, and hope. Together, we can create a legacy of healing for our young people, who will inherit and ultimately lead our uncertain world.
To learn more about how you can get involved and support the renovations to Ilfeld High Mountain Lodge, contact Kate Frankfurt at Kate@sierraexperience.org.