Photo: Matthew Millman

Tillamook Creamery

Tillamook, Oregon

Through architecture, interactive exhibits, landscape design, and custom furnishings, the Tillamook Creamery illustrates the company’s mission and origins, celebrating the 80 member families who make up Tillamook’s farmer-owned cooperative. Located adjacent to the company’s flagship manufacturing facility and headquarters, the new facility allows Tillamook to share their traditions, processes, and products with 1.3 million visitors every year.

Existing Conditions

Although it was beloved amongst customers and the community, Tillamook’s previous visitor center had been inadequate for years. It was created piecemeal beginning in the 1950s, expanding in crementally as the business grew. By 2015, Tillamook needed an updated space to meet the programmatic needs of a growing visitorship, and authentically express their brand and story.

Inspired by Agricultural Tradition

Drawing on local agricultural vernacular, the building is a modern barn structure with a simple shed roof and an adjacent landscape of grasses, shrubs and trees native to the Oregon coast. The building has an exposed structure and high degree of transparency throughout. A warm, refined material palette recalls simple barn materials, including exterior cedar and corrugated metal siding, and interior concrete floors and plywood exhibit armatures.

Integrated Visitor Experience

Inside, the exhibits provide an in-depth look at dairy farming on the Oregon coast. Entering beneath a mural of a Tillamook cow, visitors begin a self-guided tour that tracks the entire lifecycle of Tillamook products, through a viewing gallery over looking the factory where visitors can watch cheese being made and packaged. At the end of the tour, visitors are invited to sample Tillamook dairy products before they enter the retail space and restaurant areas.

Growing With a Brand

Tillamook receives upwards of 1.3 million visitors a year, and as many as 18,000 people a day during peak summer months. Right‑sizing the building to accommodate surges of summer visitors meant including a covered outdoor dining pavilion extending from the restaurant area. From landscape and site design to the building’s architecture, interiors and exhibits, the new visitor experience invites guests to become part of the ever-evolving Tillamook story and its relationship to the surrounding community.

With this project, we wanted to reference Tillamook’s agricultural tradition with a rational, straightforward building that is true to the experience and history of the farmers who make up the Tillamook Cooperative. Tom Kundig, FAIA, RIBA
Design Principal – Architecture
With this project, we wanted to blur the lines between architecture and interpretive storytelling to reveal a deeper understanding of the Tillamook story—both its unique history, and the future of farming in our region. Alan Maskin
Design Principal – Exhibits

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