WBA was brought in by an American Hotelier (whom we have long admired and is somewhat the opposite of our other hotel client Aman Resorts) to consider a partnership with an Owner / Developer and their architect on an all-entitlements land north of Joshua Tree National Park. Later, we were asked to provide ‘a sketch’ of an alternate proposal. We started as always by spending full day (sunrise, midday, sunset, nighttime) walking site extents carefully observing ‘specificity of place’, its salient qualities and latent potential(s) to simultaneously preserve those qualities and experience it ‘as is’ for posterity. Sites aspect was importantly a partially wind-protected bowl (strong westerly winds are common) opening perfectly to southeast for warm winter sunrise rays (and JTP views) with encircling low-boulder-strewn-mountains protecting it from the harshest morning / afternoon summer sun. Our observations (our research) include all histories of the site, its geology, its flora and therefore fauna. The most salient feature was its creosote-bowl-plain ever-expanding outwards toward JTP. Creosote is tell-tale plant of the Mojave Desert, is thousands of years-old, a medicinal herb, and blooms yellow in Spring. What feeds this creosote bowl is its encircling-boulder-strewn-mountain watershed. All (3) schemes on project / project pages take different approaches to preserve this millennial watershed and therefore the Mojave. The first is an expansive peripheral porous courtyard with ‘creosote plain’ at its heart and at its outermost edge fire / parking access to each room-type between boulder mountain and complimentary Integra masonry walls / volumes.