PGA National Resort

The goal of the PGA National Resort’s remodel was an ambitious one: to craft a new golf club/lifestyle hybrid that serves as not just a course, but a true destination resort. To reposition and redesign the PGA Golf Resort at Palm Beach Gardens in Florida, Simeone Deary Design Group and KBAA immersed themselves in research to fully understand the current state of today’s golf clubs in order to create the golf club of tomorrow. Through a deep-dive into current challenges – memberships and competition, how to appeal to the tried-and-true golfer, the non-golfer, and what new generations are looking for, the team set out to break the mold of the typical club and showcase what a real and relevant golf resort can and should look like. Ultimately, the goal was to leave a new and exciting impression on the golf community and appeal to a new generation of members and their families while becoming more exclusive, more sought after, more coveted, creating a rush to join as we orient toward a more well rounded perspective that includes health and wellness.

With a nod to the inception of Palm Beach Gardens in the 1960s, the Mighty Banyan Tree became a symbol of the garden cities of tomorrow at the resort, culminating in the lobby bar with a glass tree installation inspired by the Banyan tree canopy and made out of blown glass and crystals with modular metal branches. KBAA commissioned glass artist Jonathan Swanz to create the installation, kicking off a months-long collaboration between Jonathan and the teams to engineer a tree that was both fantastical and structurally sound. In all, 1,456 pieces of glass and 616 light bulbs make up the visually arresting piece, which has 56 five-foot branches wrapped in light-refracting glass.

“Collaborating closely with the specialized group at Kevin Barry Art Advisory and the gifted glass artisan Jonathan Swanz, our design team was able to realize a depiction that was well beyond our initial schemes,” says Lisa Simeone, owner of SDDG. “Listening closely to our objectives and intents and using techniques that were both innovative and out of the box, Ilyse, Angela, and Jonathon gave our project an art piece that is not just art at all but a true experience.”