1 Hotel West Hollywood

Angel City Lumber helped 1 Hotel, West Hollywood, source over 75 tons of local lumber for planters, furniture, and sculptures. Our team created custom reception desks and large planter beds from Blue Gum Eucalyptus and Aleppo Pine, integrating design with nature.

A game-changing hotel uses over 75 tons of local lumber to bring nature and sustainability center stage at 1 Hotel, West Hollywood. The multifaceted project calls on our full suite of services and includes unique furniture pieces, large-scale sculptural objects, and functional landscaping elements.

The Blue Gum Eucalyptus was supposed to save Southern California. Native to Australia, Ellwood Cooper, and our very own Abbot Kinney, planted countless saplings in the 1860s. The hope was that Blue Gum would green the naturally arid and brown landscape, serve as a medicinal elixir and put a stop to the looming lumber shortage by supplying railroad ties and fence posts with its unprecedented growth rate and mighty diameter. Unfortunately, the drying techniques at the time were lacking and the Blue Gum was not used for lumber, but not before the tree colonized most of California.

Today, we prize the overlooked Blue Gum Eucalyptus for its strength and stability. Its resin (kino), density, and closed grain make it an excellent outdoor application species. With our modern drying expertise, we pull out its taupe backdrop with subtle streaks of brown and mauve. Our flat, sawn boards reveal the grain’s cosmic and elliptical shapes. The quarter and rift sawn boards create marked patterns that look like staccato notes on sheet music.

From the cloud forests in the Canary Islands off the southern coast of Morocco, the Canary Island Pine is the embodiment of endurance. Drought tolerant and able to pull even the slightest bit of moisture from the air with its long needles, it is among the most fire-resistant species in the world. Because of the tremendous amount of resin, Canary Island Pinewood possesses a deep, rich amber color. Properly dried and hardened, this pine is an ideal exterior application species for fence stock, timber, log benches, stools, and planter bed stock. The crystallized resin makes the wood heavy and remarkably pest and rot-resistant. Add to that the cool, blue-steel streaks in the sapwood and regular, gridlike sequence of small bird's eye patterning throughout. These qualities, along with its fast growth rate, make it a favorite for urban planners and developers all over the globe.