National media has hailed Big Cedar Lodge as the most unusual hotel in the U.S., a “must visit” hotel, and one of the top 20 hotels in the world. It is located inside the iconic stainless-steel pyramid on the Memphis riverfront, which our firm’s design transformed into a 535,000 square feet Bass Pro Shops.

Designing the hotel presented an interesting geometric challenge for our firm because its 103 rooms with 11 different prototypes were located inside the pyramidal building. Inspired by a theme of treetop hunters’ cabins, OT Marshall Architects exercised its creativity to create specially-themed rooms that amplified that theme – the flyfishing lodge, the duck cabin, the bass shack, and the tree house.

The hotel embodies our award-winning design of the vast retail space, the most dramatic adaptive reuse project in the Southeast. Forbes called the 32-story, 26.5 million cubic feet building “one of the most fascinating structures in America.” The lodge-like hotel was inspired by the style and look of rustic design of 19^th century architect Charles Frederick Whittlesey’s El Tovar Hotel. To this end, our design is a marriage between historic architecture and the sleek contemporary Pyramid in which it’s housed.

For the unique handmade furniture and fixtures in the hostel, our firm worked with the in-house Bass Pro Ozark craftsmen on the iron work, woodworking and more. Every hotel room has a balcony overlooking the most dramatic retail store in America with its shadowy swamps filled with fish, giant cypress trees reaching for the top of the building, and the world’s tallest free-standing elevator taking guests 28 stories to the apex, which features a restaurant and observations decks overlooking Memphis and the Mississippi river from every direction.  Ultimately, the design is an integration of the scientific, the artistic, and the experiential.

It is unquestionable that it deserves being called a “one-of-a-kind” hotel.