The redevelopment of the 9-acre property will dramatically increase open space, create lavish gardens, relocate all parking underground and remove unsightly elements, totally transforming the site from one in which concrete prevails to a welcoming, park-like environment. The architectural design will represent California luxury life-style, celebrating the climate and indoor/outdoor living though extensive transparency and connectivity between interior and exterior landscaped spaces. All the new buildings will feature extensive glass areas and open balconies, and will conform to LEED standards.

The existing Beverly Hilton Hotel, designed by Welton Becket and completed in 1955, will be enhanced with a new, celebratory tree-lined entrance. The plan includes upgraded rooms and a new pool area. All of the existing and new hotel roofs will be intensely landscaped, affording views from all floors of planted roof murals. The new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel will mark the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards. It will be a multi-faceted glass and warm gray limestone clad, articulated structure with a cobble-stoned arrival piazza and garden. Fronting the corner will be a new restaurant and a major sculpture, announcing and anchoring the gateway.

The two new condominium buildings are conceived as a pair of coupled, stepped structures. They will be cladded in glass and silver gray aluminum panels. Their facades flank the Beverly Hilton Hotel entry drive, reinforcing its renewed presence. Finally, the masterplan greatly improves traffic flow and circulation in and around the site. By literally pulling back the property edges, the plan allows for two new lanes along Wilshire Boulevard and one new lane along Santa Monica Boulevard.

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These three diverse components are efficiently organized to rest within a common structural system and facade design. The parking system is a double helix, which requires a width of 128 feet. The hotel’s atrium, open corridors and suite depth require 44 feet on each side. The office lease span requirement is 45 feet “clear” from the core to the exterior wall.

The planning module is 3’4″ and is used vertically and horizontally. Parking and hotel floor-to-floor heights require three modules (10’0″), and the office floor requires four modules (13’4″). The hotel suite room widths require four modules. Office planning is based on workstations of two and one half modules (8′ 4″): office type A requires three modules and office type B requires four modules.

Columns in the upper office portion of the building are located on forty-foot centers along the perimeter, which correspond to three hotel room widths. The columns increase in number as the structure is “taken down” through the hotel and garage perimeter walls.

Special conference and ballroom space is provided at the sky lobby floor located below the Hotel Atrium and serviced by Embassy Suites.

The building massing is contextually responsive while retaining a unique “signature” visual character, which will provide a bold iconographic landmark for Baltimore.

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