In collaboration with architects Group 4 and HMC, SWA transformed Chabot College’s predominantly paved Grand Court into an outdoor living room at the heart of the 14,000-student campus. The opportunity to reimagine the space came in conjunction with siting, massing, and designing the new iconic, three-story faceted library where the campus’ main walks intersect.
Alongside the library’s lobby and cafe, a series of long wood slat benches occupy Chochenyo Plaza, a space to study, dine, and socialize. Chabot College is located on the traditional lands of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, and within the plaza, phrases in the tribe’s Chochenyo language cast into the pavement embed cultural meaning into the everyday campus experience.
The site design also resculpted the upper edge of the original lawn amphitheater, adding a new row of trees and seating to frame both the amphitheater and provide foliage for the reading rooms above. Furthermore, the site design softened the Grand Court’s elliptical perimeter concrete arcade with a row of deciduous trees. An outdoor terrace on the third floor provides long views of the East Bay Hills.
Universidad de Monterrey Campus Master Plan
The project focuses on improving the sustainability of the 247-acre campus, designing a shift from a vehicular orientation to one that encourages pedestrian, bicycle, and transit use. Site design strategies employ indigenous plant materials and natural water retention and filtration for low-maintenance landscaping. Phase 1 includes site design for one of Latin...
CREATE Campus, National University of Singapore
CREATE, the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise, is an international research campus and innovation hub at the National University of Singapore. Home to a vibrant scientific community, CREATE hosts the National Research Foundation, interdisciplinary research centers from top universities, and corporate laboratories such as the Singapore...
Stanford Hoover Institution Traitel Building
The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is a public policy research organization promoting principles of individual, economic, and political freedom. CAW and SWA collaborated as a design team to create a building and site that helped promote research collaboration through open site connections and workspace.
SWA focused on a site design that exten...
Shanghai International Dance Center
Inspired by the idea of movement, this collaboration with Studios Architecture achieves an artful harmony of building with landscape, program with site. The image of a dancer in grand jete kindled the designers’ imaginations and served as the project’s organizing idea. Asia’s first professional dance complex is tucked between a freeway, a subway station...