The Dongguan District is located at Binhai Bay in China’s Pearl River Delta, strategically situated between Shenzhen’s airport and the city of Guangzhou. An international competition asked for ways to capitalize on the heavy flow of traffic between them while also addressing extreme environmental risks: the World Bank ranks the Pearl River Delta at the top of its list for expected economic losses due to climate change. The area is subjected to tropical cyclones and storm surges; 85 percent of its land is due to be inundated before 2100.
The concept of fluidity helped direct planning decisions that could connect the site’s social, environmental, and capital dispositions in this future “Delta City”. Operating from the fundamental knowledge that the area could at times be up to four meters underwater, a second public ground level was established throughout the project at that height. Plugging into the suggested walkways and bridges in that elevated grid is a landscape urbanism “kit of parts” designed to facilitate constructive interchanges between building forms and architecture. Intersecting civic and hydrological systems will facilitate knowledge transfer between the region’s social and civic realms.
Lewis Avenue
In a city renowned for fantasy, the design of Las Vegas’ Lewis Avenue celebrates the local desert landscape and affirms the street as part of a real-world working district. It was one of the first projects to be implemented in Mayor Oscar B. Goodman’s 2000 Las Vegas Downtown Centennial Plan, aimed at revitalizing the historic downtown core. The City asked SWA,...
Santaluz
This planned community 30 minutes north of San Diego is a testament to the collaboration of a visionary client, talented land planner, and creative designers and marketers. Set gracefully on its rolling site and preserving over half its acreage as open space, Santaluz is both a model of environmental planning and a financial success, out-performing all its loc...
Downtown Cairo Planning & Revitalization
The Khedive’s Cairo is often referred to as the heart of modern Cairo. Laid out by Ismail Pacha in the late 19th century, the Khedive’s Cairo was a physical manifestation of the governmental and societal evolution that the Khedive envisioned for Egypt. Like many American and European cities, time and intense pressures of popul...
Quail Hill
This mixed-use planned community of over 6,000 people features over 2,000 dwellings in a broad mix of single family detached dwellings, and over 500 multifamily dwellings, complemented by a retail center and 800,000 square feet of flexible development. . Prominent natural landforms such as the Southern Ridge and the three knolls have been preserved and incorpo...