The Shenzhen Longgang River Blueway System is envisioned to unlock the tremendous land value of this 13-mile-long suburban watershed and galvanize the city’s future growth. SWA’s proposal addresses urbanization issues pertaining to water, the environment, and open space shortage, while also activating industrial and cultural revitalization in the surrounding district. The design builds riverside ecological corridors at a regional scale while guaranteeing water quality and quantity; by incorporating pockets of native planting and habitat that extend deep into the adjacent urban areas via rain gardens and bioswales, streets move water as well as people and vehicles. Striking murals line the riverside walls and punctuate urban villages and new developments, conveying the history of Longgang and the Hakka people who inhabited these lands centuries ago.
Residents and visitors are offered a rich variety of outdoor pursuits: art, craft, and food markets; music events, and fascinating evening light shows. Unique developments engage the river as a new recreational resource. Sporting opportunities for young adults, adventure play for children and families, and birdwatching for seniors define the new open spaces along the river.
Buffalo Bend Park
Houston’s East End is a bifurcated community, with heavy industry brushing up against a vibrant and culturally diverse residential area. Answering residents’ call for more park space, SWA created Buffalo Bayou Bend Nature Park by converting a formerly neglected industrial site into a wetland ecosystem and public green space.
Three interconnected ponds, ...
Resonant Memory: One October Memorial
Inspired by the shared love of country music that brought people from all over the world together for the Route 91 Music Festival, Resonant Memory is based on the shape of an acoustic guitar. The design makes particular use of the instrument’s sound hole as a recurring motif to represent absence, honoring the lives lost on October 1, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada...
Guicheng Riverfront
After winning a design competition in 2017, SWA undertook two projects within the Guicheng Riverfront park system, a defining blueway and leisure loop belt. The two completed parks – South Bank Waterfront Park and Eco-Island Park – are designed with distinct programmatic elements and characters based on the riverfront’s surrounding land use and urban settings,...
Riverside Park South
Located on the West Side of Manhattan on the scenic Hudson River shoreline, Riverside Park South is a massive, multiphase project of sweeping ambition and historic scope. Combining new green space, new infrastructure, and the renovation of landmark industrial buildings, the plan – originally devised by Thomas Balsley Associates in 1991 – is an extension of Fre...