BALENCIAGA
West Hollywood, CA
Set back from the street on a west-facing corner, the West Hollywood base of Basque designer Cristóbal Balenciaga’s storied fashion house, founded in San Sebastián in 1917, is deftly surrounded by a dramatic garden very much in keeping with its avant-garde aesthetic.
Geometric planters containing low-growing succulents rise up from the ground to echo the form of display cases visible inside the building’s glazed showroom. Leafy Ash trees hover overhead, and cascading vines gently drape the facades and frame the apertures.
Design Team:
Elysian Landscapes
Brand + Allen Architects
Completed: 2008
Area: 14,685 sf
BALMAIN
Los Angeles, CA
Inspired by a mythical private garden on the Left Bank of the Seine in Paris, an engaging collaboration resulted in a leafy courtyard behind the Melrose Place storefront of the Parisian fashion house founded by Pierre Balmain in 1945.
Echoing the deep hue of the building’s exterior surfaces, rectangular limestone pavers frame discrete planted spaces where low, mounding shrubs as well as stately trees and hedges evoke the tone of French urban gardens.
Design Team:
Elysian Landscapes
Studio KO, Architect
JTNAA, Architect
Completed: 2017
Area: 8,018 sf
SAINT LAURENT
Los Angeles, CA
A rooftop garden for the global Saint Laurent flagship on Rodeo Drive occasioned an inspired reflection on the iconic design and material palette of the store, with its vertical rhythms, toney reflections, and rich marble surfaces.
Bordering this outdoor room on three sides, the undulating black lava gravel planting bed – light enough to meet structural weight limits and mounded just enough to provide adequate soil depth – becomes a mineral edge that suggests connectivity with landscapes beyond the scope of the roof itself. With stands of Mexican Fence Post cactus silhouetted against the surrounding white plaster walls, the enclosure takes on an otherworldly luminosity.
Design Team:
Elysian Landscapes
Atmosphere Design Group, Architects
Completed: 2017
Area: 500 sf