The Virgin Hotel Dallas is a boutique hotel appropriately set within the city’s design district, carrying forward Virgin’s high standards of distinctive, comfortable luxury programs and experiences for guests. SWA worked with the architecture and interior design team to propose a modern spin on an urban hotel constrained by an extremely small site. Fronting Hi-Line Drive, the hotel’s entry and streetscape, along with series of public art and artistic street furniture, serve as bold movements to attract locals. Transitions between hardscape materials help to define spaces for different programs. Trees and landscape soften the diamond pattern façade, and provide a buffer from the street. Preserved site trees not only provide shaded canopy for the outdoor coffee house, but also inherit the history and memory of the site.
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...
Hotel Higashiyama
At the Northern end of Kyoto, Japan’s cultural capital, a 100-year-old elementary school sat vacant for years at one of the city’s three Edo-era entrances—in feudal times, a rest stop for weary travelers. Vacant for years, the school was transformed into a dual-purpose property, its central building functioning as a boutique hotel with sweeping views of the Hi...
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...
Hyatt Gainey Ranch
The 28-acre site is part of an existing master planned resort community. The golf course and lake were existing. The owner wanted water gardens and had in mind tropical gardens with artificial rocks and rope bridges. The designers convinced the owner that a concept that recalled ancient South American themes was more appropriate for the desert. Lines of date p...