The Classic Residence by Hyatt in Palo Alto provides seniors with independent and assisted living facilities. The roughly 19-acre site is adjacent to the San Francisquito Creek, a shopping mall, and two in-progress SWA projects- Ronald McDonald House and Stanford West Apartments. Hyatt has been working closely with SWA as well as the City of Palo Alto and Stanford University to develop the site. SWA has placed a special emphasis on maintaining the riparian corridor with native planting, using consideration when dealing with the archaeologically sensitive areas of the site, as well as existing recreation trails and landscape amenities such as parks and play areas. The architectural elements have been sited with the same understanding, and with great care to avoid significant existing planting. This layout incorporates a series of landscaped garden-courts, each with a unique theme: a cut flower garden, a kitchen garden, a sensory experience garden, etc. These garden-courts serve as visual clues for residents to associate with their homes while providing places for walking, resting, reflection, and visual enjoyment.
Hicks Mountain Ranch
Hicks Mountain Ranch is a 900-acre sustainable ranching operation in West Marin County. The watershed, which includes grassland, wetland, and riparian habitats had been impacted by decades of grazing. In addition to developing a home on the property, plans were instituted to restore the ecosystem and mitigate the impacts of development. In addition to undertak...
Stanford Branner Hall
Branner Hall is a three-story undergraduate dormitory built in 1924 by Bakewell and Brown, prominent architects of the time who were also responsible for San Francisco’s City Hall. The renovation design creates two significant courtyards: an entrance courtyard flanked with four-decades-old magnolia trees shading a seating area and an interior courtyard with a ...
Palo Alto Medical Center
The Palo Alto Medical Center is an expansion of an active medical building on a site surrounded by office uses. SWA’s goal was to compose new pockets of open space between buildings and provide a contiguous landscape for patients, visitors and physicians. The landscape layout includes a plaza, healing garden and a corridor garden. A new central walkway provide...
Kingold Century Centre
This new mixed-use development features a complex program that includes a hotel, rental space for other companies, eateries, service apartments, and retail facilities. SWA’s design challenge was to create a common space that can be enjoyed by the disparate users on-site at any given time. A common plaza includes multiple restaurants on a terraced platform that...