Desert Modern Outside Sin City 
{"autoplay":"true","autoplay_speed":"8000","speed":"1000","arrows":"true","dots":"false","loop":"true","nav_slide_column":5,"rtl":"false"}
{"autoplay":"true","autoplay_speed":"8000","speed":"1000","arrows":"true","dots":"false","loop":"true","nav_slide_column":5,"rtl":"false"}

DETAILS

LocationLas Vegas, Nevada, United States
ClientHoward Hughes Corporation
Size109 acres

Downtown Summerlin is a 109-acre, high-end retail and entertainment lifestyle center forming the heart of a 22,500-acre master-planned community in the western suburbs of Las Vegas. The landscape design emphasizes the need for comfort and shade while drawing upon the natural desert environment as a visual source for materials, colors, and textures. By distilling the surroundings into their simplest forms—desert floor, canyon wall, and sky—a contemporary abstract framework was created for the project’s horizontal, vertical, and overhead surfaces. The landscape design strives to present a unique retail environment by creating spaces that reflect the natural environment, as well as the history and heritage of iconic Las Vegas, while remaining autonomous from both.

Related Projects

Mission Viejo Civic Core

The City of Mission Viejo hired SWA to analyze its core area for revitalization potential. The area contains a mix of civic, commercial, and recreational uses. A fragmented ownership pattern, dated architectural design, endless surface parking, minimal landscaping, and the lack of a pedestrian-friendly environment hindered the establishment of a town center th...

OCT Bay

Located in Shenzhen, OCT Bay has a combined site area of approximately 1.25 square kilometers including equal parts new urban center and nature preserve. SWA provided both master planning and landscape architectural services for the entire site. As a new urban cultural and entertainment destination, OCT Bay provides urban amenities, entertainment components, p...

Rodeo 39

As larger big-box companies continue to close their brick-and-mortar stores, each leaves behind a sizable void within the communities these centers once served. Rodeo 39, seeks to break the models of traditional retail that are founded on convenience and visibility and shift the focus to community aspirations and user experience.

The 31,000-square-foot ...

Envision Willowick

The Cities of Garden Grove and Santa Ana are developing a “vision” for redevelopment of the Willowick Golf Course site. This process explored conceptual land use options that are formed by community and stakeholder collaboration and input. The Visioning is intended to be used to guide the preparation of development plans for Willowick. The visioning...

Monet Avenue 2.0 at Victoria Gardens

A decade after completing Victoria Gardens, the owner was looking to refresh the project to keep it relevant for years to come. SWA redesigned a three-block streetscape and plaza along Monet Avenue, a main retail street there. The focus is on the next generation of users, with a shopping environment that highlights the social landscape and blurs the lines betw...

Uptown Commons

SWA was tasked with creating a neighborhood gathering space and exterior dining hall that is an exercise in contradictions — open and welcoming, while able to be walled off. By blending urban planning, landscape architecture, interior design, and architecture with an understanding of retail real estate, the team was able to quickly establish development yields...

Shaoxing Paojiang Sales Center

As a model home sales center, the first concern of this project is to guide visitors from the entrance to the exhibition center in an elegant and impressive way. Shaoxing is famous for its natural and cultural heritage, which inspired the design of several elements: a “blue galaxy” pool, southern concept frame wall, galaxy walk, inkwell pool, and flower garden...

NOAH Ethnographic Village

Armenia has set an initiative to increase global tourism and develop a site within its capital city with majestic views of Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark is purported to have landed. SWA developed a strategic plan based on several principles derived from the existing context of the site: first, to capitalize its proximity to important landmarks that allow for ...