Royston Hanamoto Alley and Abey, landscape architects with headquarters in Mill Valley, California, have been working with Sunset Development Company on the Bishop Ranch Business Park in San Ramon since 1980. Along with the architects Hoover Associates, RHAA was part of the initial site planning team for this 585 acre premier corporate business campus, and has since designed and executed more than 10 building complexes within the park.

The Millennium Medallion fountain is the center piece of this 40 acre business park complex. Surrounded by four buildings comprising approximately 1 million square feet of office space, the fountain is the central jewel of a formal, long and narrow, 1000 ft x 100 ft garden. The Millennium Medallion was designed as a strong nucleus for this four-building complex in order pull together a narrow and extended site plan into a cohesive whole. Since each of the 250,000 sq. ft buildings has its own front and back entrance and associated parking areas, the complex as a whole did not have a single formal entrance or an identifiable site feature. The fountain was designed to remedy this site planning issue and to provide a handsome front entrance to this complex.

While the owner of Sunset Development, Alex Mehran, had identified that a fountain would be his main preference for the central feature, strong westerly afternoon winds in the San Ramon Valley precluded the uses of jets, especially since this north-south oriented site plan was completely open to the west facing parking lot. The power of water as a basic element that can reach across age, gender and ethnicity is undeniable. The challenge was to create a strong visual and audible effect in the face of very strong winds. Another challenge was to occupy a fairly large plaza without using a lot of water.

After looking at various possibilities the design was then developed by a team led by Aditya Advani, Principal, into a raised 14?EUR??,,????'??? wide, 9?EUR??,,????'??? high stainless steel bowl with a 1?EUR??,,????'?? curtain of water flowing into an upper pool, which then empties into a lower pool via 20 scuppers into 90 foot diameter lower pool. The curtain of water remains unbroken in the still morning air, and appears braided in the afternoon winds. The medallion effect is completed in the shallow lower pool by 20 radiating bands of concrete embedded with mica, set in a field of black cobble stones.

For the design of the steel bowl, the firm turned to well-known local steel artist Archie Held. The bowl was designed and fabricated in his Richmond, California workshop and was detailed to hide the source of the water from the viewer looking down on the fountain from an upper story.

As landscape architects for this 40-acre complex, RHAA also wanted the fountain and the associated garden to be able to reach into the hearts of its approximately 4000 inhabitants. Our goal was to create a place of magnificence as well as individual contemplation – where an office worker may be able to relax, retreat and feel rejuvenated during her lunch time break. The long linear space was developed into a series of color-themed perennial pocket gardens bordering a central strip of turf. Each of the 32 gardens has its own bench (a polished black granite slab originally designed for Bishop Ranch 8 that has become a signature piece of the business park) and has something of interest in all the four seasons. The complete effect is of an extremely colorful, floriferous garden. Two alleys of Platanus acerifolia edge the garden. The nucleus of this linear garden is of course the fountain, which is contained on one side by an arc of Prunus yedoensis ?EUR??,,????'??Akebono?EUR??,,????'??? with a tall Pittosporum eugenoides hedge behind it. A grove of Acer rubrum ?EUR??,,????'??Bowhall?EUR??,,????'??? and Sequoia sempervirens trees completes this back drop for the fountain while also housing an intimate dining patio.

Down the street for Bishop Ranch 3, RHAA was brought in to design the landscape and central courtyard for Bishop Ranch 1 in the year 2000. Accommodating approximately 750,000 square feet of office space, the site plan for this complex comprises of 3 buildings surrounding a 240 foot square central courtyard. Though the shape of the main courtyard for this complex differed sharply from the long linear space at Bishop Ranch 3, the programmatic requirements for this space remained the same. The courtyard needed a strong central feature to create a nucleus where office workers could individually retreat or gather in their lunch time break, and which would serve as the identity element for the complex. The feature needed to be strong and compelling from the ground level and also from the upper stories of the surrounding buildings.

The fountain for Bishop Ranch one is a 120-foot square pool with an asymmetrical design. Using a classical approach, 15 foot high arcing jets throw water 50 feet across from the west side of the fountain, and smaller 4 foot high vertical jets create a simple grid on the remaining half of the pool. From above the fountain looks like a Persian carpet – in fact its inspiration was the Shalimar Gardens built 1632 by the Mughal Emperor Shahjahan in the mountains of the Kashmir Valley in India. The west throwing arcing jets preempt any spraying due to stray wind. As Camino Ramon dips almost 14 feet down to the central courtyard, the arcing jets come into view as the terminus of that street, perfectly framing the entrance door of the building at its end. The pool is edged with a granite seat wall that is perfect for eating lunch or relaxing.

Alleys of Platanus acerifolia ring the courtyard and will eventually form a green wall around it. The planting design for the complex is all based on a cream and yellow theme, and is more muted and stately than Bishop Ranch 3. The foundation planting for all the buildings is done with a cream Hemerocallis. The large parking lots surrounding the complex are hidden with double rows of Fraxinus uhdei ?EUR??,,????'??Magestic Beauty?EUR??,,????'??? and staggered rows of Phormium tenax ?EUR??,,????'??Apricot Queen?EUR??,,????'???. The entrance drive into the campus, a double row of Platanus acerifolia, is edged with broad band of white Agapanthus orientalis ?EUR??,,????'??Albus?EUR??,,????'??? and has the white groundcover Rosa floral carpet in the central island.