Private residential community with Arnold Palmer Premier golf course and sundry facilities.
Club House / 250 Unit Resort Hotel / Community Center & Village / Equestrian Center / Winery
1000 Acres
Polk County, North Carolina, USA
White Oak is the last remaining parcel of a 93,000 acre plantation granted by charter from King George II in 1743. At the heart of the estate is White Oak Creek, a winding watercourse that breaths life to the surrounding 200 acres of fertile plateau. The golf course is accommodated in the sanctuary of this valley while the residential element rests upon the surrounding elevated 800 acres of forest and pasture land.
The natural amphitheater like topography allows golfers a genuinely unobstructed restorative experience and simultaneously allows residents to enjoy elevated views of the central landscaping feature, the course. It has not been possible to find a more appropriate site for this kind of developement.
To encourage communal interactivity we threaded the nature trail network through each buffer area. Communal overlook towers of varying character and functions with gas light beacons at their pinnacle were placed in prominent positions within these buffer zones.
We felt it important that residents could feel part of something greater than themselves when at White Oak. Each evening at dusk the beacons will illuminate from ridges and valleys between neightbourhoods across the entire acres. Somewhat Tolkenesque, this is one of our favourite images at White Oak
One of our primary concerns in Master planning was to ensure that a strong sense of community and place was created within the residential zones. We wished to avoid the anonymous sprawl evident in so many of the precedents developments we viewed.
Part of our solution was to define neighborhoods with landscaped buffer zones and this facilitate a sense of transition as on moves through the community. This was achieved by extending "tentacles" of landscaping from the central core, the golf course to the residential extremities the site.