This restudy of the master plan for the 200-hectare Hewlett Packard site at Roseville, undertaken with architects Holland, East & Duvivier, led to a new master plan for the 23,000-square-meter service, repair, and distribution facility on the site as well as full landscape architectural services for the upgrading of the surrounding landscape. The plan details building placement, road layout, grading, entries, pedestrian ways, employee recreation areas, and open space, while accommodating a modular building type intended to serve as a prototype for future Hewlett Packard expansion.
The property had previously suffered from difficult soil conditions and a series of long, hot summers that had killed off all previous landscaping efforts. The solution, proposed by SWA, was not to try to master the environment but to respect and appreciate it. Drought-tolerant native grassland was reestablished wherever possible, and against the background of the vast, open plain of the Sacramento Valley, shade was introduced wherever possible. A poplar-lined pedestrian walkway is raised above the Chinese Elm-shaded parking lot, leading into the building. Oaks and Bradford pear trees were used to unify the recreational complex and to give its large sports courts areas both scale and shade. To help the trees thrive, root competition from shrubs, ground cover, and lawns was eliminated, and the permeable ground plan emphasizes localized and individual watering, as well as a sub-drain system to mitigate flash floods.
Giant Interactive Headquarters
SWA collaborated with Morphosis Architects on a new ecological park and living laboratory for Giant Interactive Headquarters, a 45-acre corporate campus in Shanghai, China. The design concept blurs the distinction between the ground plane and the structure, weaving water and wetland habitats together with the folded green roof of the main building design. The ...
Shanghai Tower
China’s tallest building, Shanghai Tower, is located in the Lujiazui Financial Center Zone near the Shanghai World Financial Center and Jin-Mao tower. SWA’s landscape design establishes a “Tower Park” to complement the building’s iconic form and function, connect the mixed-use project with its urban neighborhood, and provide a variety of beautiful settin...
Walmart Home Office Landscape Master Plan
What if the vast and varied landscapes of Northwest Arkansas surrounded and thrived all around the future Walmart Home Office Campus, reversing the typical expectations of a corporate headquarters campus? Walmart as a corporation has always celebrated its hometown heritage, and so their mandate for the 350-acre campus follows that same instinct: to preserve na...
Ichigaya Forest
“Ichigaya Forest” is the privately owned, publicly accessible, major open space on Dai Nippon Printing Company’s 5.4-hectare new world headquarters in the Shinjuku Ward. Vertical development and production modernization that extends underground was made possible the creation of this 3.2-hectare open space. Over half the site is now planted wi...