One of the world’s largest municipal parks, the 1,300-acre Great Park in Irvine, California, is currently under construction with phased openings continuing through 2029. The conceptual framework encompasses redesign and implementation of near- and longer-term uses, with the intent to “put the park back into the park.” The vast site, which was once the Marine Corps’ El Toro Air Station, was first reimagined as public open space with a focus on sports and agriculture in the early 2000s, and included a farmers’ market, multiple sports fields, and a permanent aviation heritage exhibition, among other features. Building upon this early work, the new SWA and Kellenberg Studio framework provides overall planning principles and design direction.
Grounded in the California landscape and inspired by Central Park traditions, Great Park serves multiple uses, incorporating a major regional sports park as well as a cultural terrace of repurposed military hangars adapted into a museum mall and interactive discovery exhibit. Its features include a landscape wildlife corridor, riparian arroyos, and a California native tree palette carefully planned for species succession over time. The design establishes a premier 60-acre botanical garden, 40-acre forest reserve, and a research library that rivals any other in California, promotes active lifestyles via the incorporation of a major regional sports park, and celebrates the spirit of music with a new 10,000- to 12,000-seat amphitheater. It also honors the site’s Marine Corps history and veterans’ service through a memorial garden and aviation museum featuring more than 40 aircraft, with interactive elements. The redevelopment will consolidate and enhance existing uses while also addressing urban forestry needs in the warm, arid climate, providing ample shade for approximately 40 percent of the park’s entire acreage while maintaining a sparse understory to support security needs.
The design limits parking to the park’s perimeter, the entirety of which is navigable via a loop road. Within the park itself, a multimodal grand promenade will connect the five major zones, complete with tram stops, bike cabins, and important regional connections via a MetroLink stop on its southwest side. Envisioned as one of the United States’ signature urban parks, similar to NYC’s Central Park, the vast new public open space will provide equity in access and activity, and create a destination that can evolve over the decades — if not centuries — into what the residents of Irvine and Orange County desire in meeting their recreational, sports, and community gathering needs.
Palisades Park
Santa Monica’s famous pier area draws visitors who often disregard pavement boundaries and compact the landscape soil. Palisades Park, adjacent to the iconic pier, is a particularly active site for cyclists and tourists that has long been in need of a planting strategy to discourage pedestrian overflow into the landscape. SWA’s defensive planting strategy tack...
San Jacinto Plaza
SWA’s redesign of San Jacinto Plaza, a historic gathering place in El Paso’s downtown business district provides a state-of-the-art urban open space, while protecting and celebrating the history and culture of the site. The project was the result of an intensive community process involving input from a wide range of constituents. Active programming, environmen...
Honggang Park
Nestled between two hills in Shenzhen’s Luohu District, Honggang Park is a green corridor bringing over 80 acres of open space through the city’s dense fabric. Celebrating the site’s stark topography, SWA’s design carefully threads hiking trails along the slopes to minimize ecological disturbance, with stairs providing shortcuts along switchbacks. Altogether, ...
Minute Maid Park
The much-anticipated ballpark for the Houston Astros, which opened in 2000, includes approximately 42,000 seats, a retractable roof, an attached micro-brewery, and tour bus drop off. SWA, along with Rey de la Reza Architects, designed the entire ballpark site from the building to the curb, including the remodeling of historic Union Station, now part of the sta...