SWA was retained to design the landscape of this mixed-use development collaboratively with Zaha Hadid Architects. It contains performing arts, hotel, residential, office and retail functions. Located adjacent to SWA’s Nanjing Youth Olympic Park, the design strives to merge architecture, the park landscape, and people at this iconic focal point. Landforms and landscape act as extensions of the buildings into the park landscape while providing a simple canvas for the dramatic architecture. The performing arts function spills outdoors into a small amphitheater overlooking a sunken retail courtyard. Lighting creates vibrancy in order to reinforce the Youth Cultural Centre as a public destination at night. Sustainable efforts included material re-use, water harvesting, and water quality and stormwater management initiatives. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat honored this complex with three design awards in 2018.
Shenzhen Bay
Situated just across the bay from Hong Kong, the city of Shenzhen has transformed from a small fishing town of 30,000 to a booming city of over 10 million people in 40 years – and has grown over 200 times its original size since 1980. Along the way, the character of Shenzhen’s bayfront was radically altered. Over 65 km2 of marsh and shallow bay were filled to ...
Sims Bayou
The story of Sims Bayou is based on a large vision. The project is the first step in implementing a long-range plan for watershed greenbelts in the Houston region, a comprehensive system which addresses the potential for parks, wildlife habitat, and economic real estate revitalization while also controlling flooding. The Sims Bayou project has profoundly chang...
Atherton Civic Center and Library
The vision for the Atherton Civic Center landscape is a community space set in a peaceful garden, designed to enhance the local ecology and mitigate the urban impacts of the new development. The landscape design integrates new architecture into the wider Atherton community through a strolling garden approach to site circulation. The planting areas are comprise...
Changsha Baxizhou Island
Over many decades, public agencies in China have sought to solve growing flooding issues in a defensive way: fortifying and hardening river edges, raising levee heights, and ultimately separating the people from historical connections to the water. With an understanding of river flow processes and volumes and of wetland and native forest ecology, this separati...