The Omni Hotel Terrace is located on the western terminus of Charlottesville’s pedestrian mall.  The Downtown Mall was originally designed by renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin in the early 1970’s.  After falling into a short period of obscurity, it has since enjoyed a flourishing cultural renaissance with restaurants, theaters and boutiques.  Working with a team of architects and structural engineers, we were given the task of creating an outdoor dining terrace and seating area off the back side of the Omni Hotel. 

The original design schematic (put forth before our firm joined the team) revealed a dining terrace with its foundation cut deeply into the slope less than 5 ft. from the line of mature Willow Oaks which were part of Halprin’s original planting plan.  Our immediate concerns revolved around the survival of the Oaks.  We wondered what would happen to the trees if we constructed the dining terrace in this way.  Would they either need to be removed during the construction of the footing or would the slab cut into the existing root system and eventually kill them?

We could not relocate the dining terrace and there was no alternative open space to site it.  As we had identified the trees as one of the more (if not the most) invigorating influences on the Downtown Mall, we insisted that the specimen trees remain intact and that we figure out a way to build around them.  Furthermore, losing the trees would create an intolerable heat island effect on the southwest facing brick terrace and hotel walls (thermal mass).  We convinced the client to pursue an alternative construction method (concrete piers, cantilevered terrace and hanging walls) to prevent cutting through the root system.  And we transplanted an existing Holly hedge with a unique low-growing Beech hedge around the terrace to create a more inviting enclosure without the use of obtrusive guardrails and/or fences.  Although relatively small compared to our larger urban design projects, the Omni Hotel dining terrace is no less significant from our perspective of making the ordinary extraordinary. 

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