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 food hall is flanked by two SWA-designed community plazas. A strong emphasis on materiality, sense of enclosure, and moments of threshold help to integrate the interior and exterior environments. Each of the plazas is enclosed by a hedge that is envisioned to serve as a point of transition from the surrounding traditional retail spaces into the community focused gathering spaces. A series of sculptural, terraced seat walls, large communal tables, fire pits, and game lawns, alongside murals and art installations, seek to encourage social vibrancy, a community of inclusivity, and further serve the adjacent restaurants, brewery, and boutique tenants.
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...
Downtown Summerlin
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 distilli...
Gubei Gold Street
SWA was selected to conceptualize, design, and realize a rare find in bustling Shanghai—a pedestrian mall (Gold Street). The corridor occupies three city blocks, is flanked by 20-story high-rise residential towers with retail at street level and book-ended by SWA-designed parks. Creating an iconic presence and enlivening the area, the mall features plazas, fou...
RIT Global Village and Global Plaza
Global Village, a pedestrian-only infill neighborhood adjacent to Rochester Institute of Technology’s academic core, and its mixed-use centerpiece, Global Plaza, create a social heart for 17,200 students and 3,600 faculty and staff. The landscape architects and architects collaborated on an urban design that establishes multiple “crossroads” ...