After an all-day meeting on South Congress recently, I strolled down Music Lane to Hotel Magdalena, a boutique hotel that opened in 2020. I’d been wanting to see the place since learning that Ten Eyck Landscape Architects did the landscaping and Lake|Flato Architects designed the hotel itself.

If you aren’t already familiar with their iconic work, take a look at Ten Eyck’s Kingsbury Commons at Pease Park and Lake|Flato’s Central Library in downtown Austin. The two firms are making the spaces that define today’s Austin through modern yet earthy, sustainable, outdoors-celebrating design.

Hotel Magdalena sits on a hill, and the lobby is tucked off-street on the second level, accessible via elevator or up a tree-shaded flight of stairs. One of Ten Eyck’s signature moves is turning a building’s facade into a green wall with high-climbing vines on rusty mesh trellising.

Hotel Magdalena’s groovy neon sign

Near the entrance, I was amused by an exhortation on a window to “confess here.” Later I looked up Song Confessional and discovered it’s an interactive music project:

“SINNER OR SAINT, WE’VE ALL GOT A STORY TO TELL

Started by Austin musicians, Walker Lukens and Zac Catanzaro, Song Confessional was initially conceived as a music festival activation. Beginning this summer, Song Confessional’s story recording booth will live permanently at Hotel Magdalena.

Come on down to the booth 8 am – 8 pm to recount any type of story – old, new, long, short, coming of age, fish out of water – we’re all ears. Confessions will be reviewed by local songwriters, and select stories will be developed into original songs with the chance to be featured on the Song Confessional podcast. Selected confessors will receive their original song pressed into a 7″ record.”

I kind of want to go back and confess a good story!

American beautyberry pressed against a mesh stair railing

A heritage live oak preserved during construction lives on between two of the hotel’s buildings, seeming to push its limbs against the walls. Its canopy is thin — I hope it makes it! Under its welcome shade, stairs climb from the street to the main courtyard.

Potted tropicals green up the lobby’s porch, including one plant perched atop a stone mushroom.

Inside the small lobby, glass doors offer a big view of the courtyard garden. Let’s go explore it.

And here’s where Ten Eyck’s native-centric design really comes to life. Does this look like any other hotel courtyard you’ve seen? There’s no default lawn. No tightly clipped hedges. No rows of Crayola-bright annuals. No heavy paving. Instead, lush block plantings of native Texas plants including grasses, palmettos, bald cypress, American beautyberry, Turk’s cap, and yucca, along with nonnative Mexican sycamore, fill terraced beds that barely tame a steep slope.

Chunky blocks of limestone placed in a loose, almost zigzag arrangement form the terraces of a reimagined Hill Country canyon wall. A pipe-fed stream arcs into a Corten ring surrounded by moisture-loving water clover — a stylized canyon spring? When the bald cypress and other trees fill out, the space will be more shady and even more evocative of a canyon’s trickling walls.

The oil pipe fountain and steel basin

The quarry block limestone has a fascinating pattern on the facing edge, like a network of tree roots. What is this — fossils?? Somebody will know, I hope.

This summer was unusually harsh — the second hottest in Austin’s recorded history — and the plants were still a bit stressed on this 100-degree mid-September day. But considering how new everything is, planted just two years ago, the landscaping seems to have held up pretty well. Best of all, the plantings are irrigated with storm-water runoff and HVAC condensate harvested from the buildings, according to Ten Eyck’s description.

A side view of the zigzagging limestone blocks and pipe fountain

Stairs lead up to the outdoor bar and swimming pool, and from here you get a better sense of Lake|Flato’s architectural design. Five buildings surround the central courtyard, connected via covered breezeways. Each floor enjoys generous porches with seating overlooking the courtyard. As with all Lake|Flato designs, the goal is to encourage people to be outside, with natural breezes, fans, and shade creating comfort.

The hotel is also the first mass-timber boutique hotel constructed in North America. What is mass timber, you may ask? It’s “comprised of multiple solid wood panels nailed or glued together, which provide exceptional strength and stability. It’s a strong, low-carbon alternative to concrete and steel,” according to Think Wood.

Seating on the terrace bar

I only took a quick peek at the pool, where bathers were enjoying the sun and water. The angular shape of the long, narrow pool is reminiscent of Barton Springs Pool. A “live” edge where the stone paving meets artificial turf adds to the effect of a natural, spring-fed swimming pool.

Back on the main level I admired silvery blue palmettos under a Mexican sycamore.

A path leads…

…to a modestly sized event lawn, with string lights overhead and umbrella-shaded chairs all around.

The hotel’s restaurant, Summer House on Music Lane, is on my list of places to try. The patio is shady and inviting.

Every Bunkhouse hotel — Bunkhouse owns Hotel Magdalena along with equally hip Hotel San José, Hotel Saint Cecilia, Carpenter Hotel, Austin Motel, and more — is given a story that informs its design. Lake culture informs Hotel Magdalena, according to an interview with Bunkhouse’s CEO in Forbes:

“Lake culture was an inspiration because it’s what people in Austin do in the summer to deal with the heat. It’s part of the fabric of the city and a big part of the vibe that people fall in love with. Simple pleasures, hanging out with friends and their dogs on the water, grilling, swimming, listening to or playing music. It’s fun, casual and relaxed, which is what this hotel is. The feel of the hotel draws inspiration from the 70s era which is specifically interesting just because of the richness of the music scene and the lore of that time – a sleepy but fun-loving and rebellious college town that somehow fused an underground free-love social culture with cowboy culture. It was the era that created the Austin people love today.”

Forbes, Sep 28, 2020

That such a nostalgic view of Old Austin inspires the look of New Austin is no doubt ironic to the old-timers hanging on in our booming, urbanized, suddenly ridiculously expensive city. Austin can feel unrecognizable from month to month, as apartments, hotels, and tear-downs sprout up seemingly overnight on once-sleepy streets. And yet Austin has somehow kept that friendly, laid-back vibe and wild, natural beauty that draws people here and tells them this is home.

I look forward to returning to Hotel Magdalena to enjoy a meal in that lovely courtyard and soak up Old Austin nostalgia in a New Austin setting.

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Digging Deeper

Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, authors, and gardeners a few times a year in Austin. These are limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance; simply click this link and ask to be added. Season 8 kicks off in fall 2024. Stay tuned for more info!

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