Poly International Plaza is an innovative office, retail, and exhibition center development located in the Guangzhou trade district. Sited along the Pearl River and adjacent to historic Pazhou Temple Park, the project presents a precedent toward integrating development with its site and context, embracing the place of garden and sustainability in the society’s rapid move toward modernization. The site plan forms a series of gardens and plazas. A major North-South promenade along the west boundary provides connections to an offsite hotel development and convention hall and a diagonal spatial arrangement enhances visual connections to the Pagoda Park south of the site and the Pearl River north of the site. The complete design seeks to integrate the southern Chinese landscape traditions with a modern sensitivity toward local context, climate, flora and SOM’s modern architecture. Tall, continuous tree canopies in combination with water features help to moderate the climate in providing shade and capturing cooling breezes for exterior spaces.
1265 Borregas
In recent years, mass timber has surged in popularity, combining the unique ability to sequester carbon in a building’s frame with exceptional structural and aesthetic value. For Google’s first mass timber building in Sunnyvale, SWA partnered with a multidisciplinary team to extend these principles into the surrounding landscape, creating a unified identity be...
Roche Diagnostics
As the first manufacturing facility in Asia, Roche Diagnostics hopes to set a model for future projects in the region. Located in Suzhou, a city with a strong tradition of gardening, this flagship factory will not only meet Roche’s global standard, but will be infused with the spirit of the city’s gardens, distinguishing it from a stereotypical factory. A clea...
Tencent Dachanwan Netizen Campus
Tencent Dachanwan, in the Qianhai Bay area, will be a model of science and technology that leads the future. Our vision is to provide common ground for nurturing creativity, innovation, and performance by connecting people in non-work environments. Our approach combines indoor and outdoor experience into a stimulating and complementary whole.
Tencent is...
Lite-On Headquarters
This major Taiwanese electronics company chose Taipei’s “Electronics Center” overlooking the Gee Long River for their new headquarters. The overall concept is of a 25-story slender tower rising above a sloped landscape podium that covers much of the site. Below-grade parking slopes toward the river on one side, with the urban center on the ot...