This is project is the former Westcourt in the Buttes destination hotel, illness located in Tempe Arizona.
The Buttes are a pair of volcanic rock cones on a 30+ acre site with little or no soil, but lots of rock.
While working for Cornoyer-Hedrick Architects in 1983-84 I developed the conceptual landscape design for the hardscape and softscape of the project, coordinating those concepts with the building design and siting done by the firms Architects. I laid out the auto circulation and did the conceptual site mass grading together with the Architects and established the main drop-off areas, main pool and spa locations as shown in the design development plan and sketches. The pool area, located in the large ravine between the Buttes, is supported on the downhill side by a gravity wall built of the rock debris from the excavations for the main lodge and restaurant buildings. I got that idea from a similar wall at a residence in the Moon Mountain area of Phoenix. The water feature concept was a series of linked streams and pools beginning with the spa at the main lodge and running down through the pool, over the wall and through the room wing lobby. A ‘spring’ in the desert supplying a string of manmade pools.
The landscape design development plant palette was created with the assistance of several of the other landscape designers at C+H who were Arizona natives.
