Bishop’s Lodge Resort is a 66-acre parcel situated along valleys and ridges in the high New Mexican desert, four miles from downtown Santa Fe, known for its history, natural beauty, outdoor activities, and isolated location. The core of the resort is composed of a number of individual lodge-style buildings, along with the historically significant 150+-year-old Lamy Chapel. SWA’s renovation includes remodeling the resort’s buildings and the addition of 20 new units. The site is complex, consisting of ridges, valleys, floodplains, and thickets of natural vegetation.
Before renovation, this beloved destination had suffered the decline of its usable exterior spaces, failing hardscape, patchwork grading solutions, and numerous drainage issues. The renovation included preserving and maximizing native vegetated areas and linking exterior functional spaces to their surrounding context. New landscape also incorporates drought-resistant native species, reducing the resort’s need for irrigation – which is supplemented by water harvested from the roofs. Permeable pavement will be used for hardscape areas.
Desert Ridge
SWA provided site planning and full landscape architectural services for this 1,000-room desert resort hotel on a 54-acre site. The project also includes five restaurants, a day-spa facility and a conference center. The landscape design provides a desert theme contrasted with water in the form of lakes, pools and lush foliage, and the desert theme provides a d...
Beverly Hills Hotel
Serving as the symbolic heart of the City of Beverly Hills, the Beverly Hills Hotel is synonymous with its gardens. After 80 years of high use, the hotel needed complete rebuilding and modernization. The goal of the reconstruction was to preserve and restore the historic gardens while adding new public and private outdoor spaces around the southern and western...
The Resort at Pedregal
Situated at the southernmost tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, Cabo San Lucas is a beautiful illustration of nature at its most diverse. Baja’s dramatic desert terrain is punctuated by the rugged Pedregal Mountain before converging with the pristine sandy beaches along the Sea of Cortez. Crashing blue waves of the Pacific meet the calmer waters of the Sea and cr...
Las Ventanas al Paraiso
On the Baja peninsula a seemingly lifeless landscape meets the Sea of Cortez in a dramatic vista of eroded mountains, sand and sea, creating one of the most diverse biomes on the planet. The term “sustainable” was not typically in use at the time Las Ventanas al Paraiso was conceived nearly 20 years ago, but the landscape architect nonetheless inherently recog...