Makena Beach and Golf Resort

Epitomizing hotel as atrium, the Maui Prince's lushly planted, hexagonal-shaped atrium is a memorable space. The six-story building's splayed A-shaped floor plan gives ocean views to all 310 single-stacked guest rooms. However, the Japanese-designed atrium garden remains the focal point. This soothing landscape, with its stone lanterns, tamazukuri-pruned (pruning that creates a rounded appearance) vegetation, and water features, grows upward to engage the main lobby two stories above, while at the end it escapes the hotel's confines and flows out beyond an arched bridge. The garden's progression is aided by two streams which spring from each side of the atrium near the access stairways to wend their way down to the main pools. Planters cantilevered off the lower-level galleries help to blend landscape with building. In a corner of the garden outside the atrium is a freestanding, double-pitched, hipped-roof ballroom with floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding doors. The ballroom's adjoining kare sansui (dry landscape garden) reinforces the Japanese garden theme.