In collaboration with SWA The Waldorf and Hilton enterprises combined forces to revitalize their Art Deco-inspired Beverly Hills hotels with fresh, more sustainable landscapes. SWA designed custom planters for the Waldorf entry drive and exterior garden of the Beverly Hilton, leveraging the concept of a “veil” to organize a series of hedges and screens that buffer interior guest activity from the bustling urban life of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards. At the terrace and balcony levels, plantings set behind a guardrail provide filtered views of the exterior, while functioning as a privacy element for the interior. Three distinct spaces (dubbed the Green Carpet, the California Terrace, and the Secret Garden) form unique “rooms” within the public spaces around the pool deck and roof bar. The Green Carpet event area features a 1,500-square-foot living wall, and the Secret Garden is the new home for many of the salvaged specimen palms and cycads on the property. On the roof, strategically placed screen walls and hedges offer privacy while providing a lush landscape along the hotels’ public-facing edges.
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...
Sanya Edition
This Ian Schrager-helmed Haitang Bay resort off the coast of Southern China was conceived as a “dream of aqua,” where sky and water converge. SWA’s competition-winning landscape design emulates a river delta and its convergence with the sea. Gently curved forms define the boundaries for 40 private villas, and are echoed throughout the terraced resort in ...
Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel
SWA provided full landscape architectural services for this mixed-use development, which includes a 120-room luxury hotel, five villa residences, a supporting office complex, fitness center, spa and multi-use space. The Sand Hill Hotel and associated offices are nestled onto a dramatic hillside that slopes toward the Santa Cruz Mountains immediately beyond I-2...
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...