When Japan-based Soka Gakkai International, one of the world’s largest lay Buddhist organizations, decided to establish a fully accredited liberal arts university in southern Orange County, SWA joined with the architects to create a setting that expresses the goals of the new university. Soka means “to create value” and the ideal of Soka education is to foster people who continuously strive for peace and the sanctity of life. The new campus combines an image of the ideal academic village with the beauties of a Tuscan hill town. In SWA’s master plan and landscape design for the 75-acre central campus, this melding of visual ideals becomes particularly apt because it is backed by a philosophy of ecological sustainability. The design establishes a compact development envelope that minimizes site disturbance, maximizes pedestrian circulation, and reduces the impact of utility installation. It allocates more than half the site to natural areas and open space and utilizes native plants, especially native oaks. Building placement minimizes the need for ventilation systems and artificial lighting. Parking acreage is minimized and incorporates curbless edges and water-filtering swales. The designers also wanted to preserve the character of the steep hilltop setting. The buildings–predominantly stucco with tile roofs–are terraced into the hillside, oriented to views of the surrounding hills with overlooks and view terraces, and kept to no more than three stories in height. The design challenge was creating a campus that felt from the beginning as if it were complete. The university is intended for 2,500 students and includes all of the academic and cultural amenities associated with contemporary higher education.
Medgar Evers College
This new quad provides a unifying pedestrian connection between Bedford and Franklin Avenues and between existing and new campus buildings, finally providing the campus with a cohesive identity and sense of place. With the dramatic transformation of a parking lot into more campus green space comes the opportunity to integrate a series of sustainability strateg...
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for the Visual Arts
The original Stanford campus museum was damaged in an earthquake in 1989. With help from major namesake donors to the museum, significant site improvements, expansion and seismic renovation improvements were accomplished. SWA provided master plan updates and full landscape architectural services including pedestrian pathways; two major terraces for displaying ...
Stanford Campus Center
Stanford University Facilities Project Management. Cody Anderson Wasney Architects. The addition of the Campus Center required historic renovation, seismic retrofit and a new addition to mark this important intersection of the campus. Specimen elm, cedar, cypress and Japanese black pine provided the overall setting and the design worked to preserve these impor...
Westmark School
Westmark is a private, second-through-12th-grade school focused on providing quality education to students with learning differences. The project itself has been divided into five separate phases, which will include site renovations for classrooms, courtyards, playgrounds, etc. The school provides a unique student experience that re-envisions traditional educa...