Dimensional Place

What drew me to this site in Westlake is the rooftop garden on the multi-story parking garage that my co-workers had told me about.  It's a garage that is cut into the hillside about 5 or 6 stories, so when you're in the garage leaning against the tension wire guardrail and looking down on the north side you get a little bit of canyon vertigo.  Aside from the rooftop garden there's landscape associated with the Dimensional building and the St. Jude Medical building.  My attempts to find any information online about who did the landscape design were not successful, although I did find that one of the buildings had been designed by Gensler.

Garage Cut into Hill

Stepping out of the elevator bay on the east side of the garage you get a layered view of the rooftop landscape with foreground native grasses, mid-view yuccas and background shade trees.  Presumably the trees had to be placed on top of column locations to carry the weight load, but I didn't feel like the placement was particularly regularized or grid-based when I was in the space.    So, the design choice was to create a more curated natural landscape vs. a very formal, geometric landscape.  You can see this in individual planting areas such as one that has a river rock dry creek abstraction with flagstone and very structural succulents backed by some Mountain Laurel.  The view out to the surrounding landscape is great from some locations, especially when framed by tall grasses.

View from Elevator

Dry Creek Abstraction

View Out with Grasses

The perimeter of the rooftop has a pretty standard  concrete walkway with extended niches for off-the shelf wood benches.  This style of bench is duplicated in a couple of the middle areas of the rooftop in a rocking chair version which I'd never seen.  The light fixture along this perimeter is pretty contemporary looking, more so than a rocking chair bench in my mind.  In the middle area the paving switches to mortared flagstone pathways with an irregular edge that has a more rustic quality like you'd see in a Hill Country landscape.  At the central pavilion the paving switches to a cut stone, which is back to the more contemporary feel.

Perimeter Concrete Walk

Rocking Bench

Hill Country Flagstone

Irregular Flagstone Edge

Pavilion with Cut Stone Paving

The pavilion and its pergola are definitely more in a contemporary or modern architectural style than the Hill Country flagstone pathways.  The walls match the architecture of the elevator bays on the north-east and south-west corners.  The wood and steel pergola while flat on top, has overlapping, angled wood slats underneath that give it a swooping volume that looks to me like an airplane wing.  Lighting has been integrated into the posts of the pergola which helps to hide the fixtures.  A custom Ipe bench wraps the corner on some walls, and this wood matches the pergola.  The weathered gray of this bench wood is similar to the perimeter benches but the style is a bit different.  In the pavilion there's a very modern looking cantilevered meeting table that I think is polished granite.

Pergola Detail

Pergola Lighting

Custom Bench

Meeting Table

At the Dimensional building there's a pretty traditional looking DG pathway with limestone chop block edging and variegated agaves in pots.  This leads to a terraced turf amphitheater with some tables and chairs.  The terrace walls are split face limestone blocks, and the steps are geometric cut flagstone with lights inserted into the risers.  There was a healthy stand of Dwarf Palmetto on the edge of the space.

DG Path

Terraces

Step Detail

Dwarf Palmetto (Sabal minor)

St. Jude Medical has a larger garden space that you get a birds-eye view of from the parking garage.  A constructed berm at the right side of the garden entry ties into the hillside on the back to give a bowl shape to the entire space.  At the middle is a naturalistic water feature with the water bubbling out of a large boulder.  There are a lot of different stone materials and colors converging here with pink decomposed granite, orange flagstone, and purple river rock.  Plants are in large masses with some Mexican Mint Marigold in bloom when I was there.  Outside of the garden at the vehicle drop off is a grove of three live oaks with prickly pear underneath.  Red annuals were added at the outer edge of this bed, and I think they could have been left out without being missed.  They very well may not have been in the original design.

View from Garage

Berm

Mexican Mint Marigold (Tagetes lucida)

Water Feature

Stone Convergence

Water Edge

Oak & Prickly Pear