This office building’s roof garden celebrates a potent image of the native Texas landscape: the level, grass-covered plains emerging from a wooded riparian area. A design vocabulary of native, drought-tolerant plant materials, especially selected to react to light and air movement, reinforces this design approach. The project serves as a two-acre rooftop garden for employees of this regional headquarters at the edge of Dallas’ downtown core. From the high-rise building, the garden enriches a foreground view against the dramatic Texas skies beyond. The design interprets the regional landscape in several ways. The curvilinear walk is a metaphor for the “stream,” bordered by a display garden of native annuals and perennials and backed by a thicket of native birch. This “woods,” underlain by Texas riparian groundcovers and perennials, is placed at the base of the building to separate the garden, provide privacy to the workers at this level and mitigate the scale of the building. The “plains” are a combination of native grasses organized in long wedges of perfectly horizontal green and abstractly eroded by a geometry of sloping pathways. The project uses native drought-tolerant plantings, such as Buffalo Grass, Red Yucca and perennials, wherever possible to educate and expose visitors and employees to the aesthetic strengths of regional materials, and to reduce long-term water needs and other horticultural costs.
All of the plant material is dynamic through the seasons: the birch has fall color and is leafless in the winter; the flowering natives bloom alternately year-round; and the buffalo grass changes its texture and shade of green during the year. Street level planting, including native Texas Red Yucca and Southern Red Oaks, marries the project to its urban surroundings. The project’s constraints of severe loading restrictions, waterproofing concerns and low budget led to a simple design that is a study in contrasting planes. The absolute prohibition on slab penetrations resulted in a structural slab that slopes away from the towers for the full width of the garden. On this sloping surface, the landscape architects gradually increased soil depths from 12 to 30 inches in order to maintain the level quality of the Texas plains. As a result, the gravel paths emerge as arroyos, seemingly eroded in these thin panels of native grasses.
Poly Pazhou Mixed-Use
The iconic architecture and riverside context that characterize Poly Pazhou were inspirations in this SWA/SOM collaboration, which also took adjoining development in the burgeoning region into account. Broad, sweeping landscape, featuring diverse local plant species, embraces both the soaring buildings and the Pearl River corridor, extending its spatial charac...
Nangang Trainyard Urban Regeneration Landscape
This urban regeneration plan transforms a long-abandoned trainyard site into a highly mixed-used development with retail, commercial, preschool, and public services on the podium floors. One hotel, four office, and three residential towers sit atop of the podium; and the southeast corner is occupied by a standalone administration headquarters for the Tai...
California Academy of Sciences
One of San Francisco’s first sustainable building projects, the California Academy of Sciences supports a stunning 2.5-acre green roof. Emphasizing habitat quality and connectivity, the project has received two LEED Platinum certifications.
The building’s architectural team, the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW), invited SWA Group and horticultural c...
ARTIC – Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center
ARTIC, the new 16-acre Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center in Southern California, forms a seamless gateway from Anaheim to all of Orange County, spurring economic growth and community redevelopment throughout the region. The landscape design establishes a unique and identifiable image for the ARTIC Mixed-Use District by complementing the site’s ...