An upscale complex of four apartment buildings in downtown Jakarta catering to visiting executives and their families required landscape design services to ground two recently constructed towers. Providing inspiration for enriching this flat, undifferentiated site were the country’s ubiquitous, terraced rice paddies, located just beyond the city’s border. The centerpiece of the resulting design is a stacked garden with indigenous plantings arranged in straight and curvilinear strips that link to the already developed area. The new garden’s 15-foot range in elevation functions on several levels: it offers improved views for those strolling through, provides the more intimately scaled spaces expected in such high-end residences, and hides mechanical services for a new swimming pool underneath its form. The garden’s terraces descend to a stepped waterfall that fills a replica of the swimming pool anchoring the other end of the property. Connecting the four-tower cluster along the site’s outer edge is a stone path flanked by palm trees and lush foliage that serves as a buffer against the noise and pollution from a large adjacent road.
Ping Yuen Public Housing Renovation
The San Francisco public housing projects known as “pings” are widely viewed as successful. Part of this success is a direct result of their ties with the wider Chinatown community: they are comparatively low-crime, and their tenants are well-organized. Composed of four buildings with 434 units, 2,000+ residents, and five acres of landscape, the Pings are a pa...
Maestria Residences
Only an hour away from Jakarta, the Maestria Residences provide a close connection to nature without sacrificing a close sense of community. The neighborhood is designed as a vibrant hub of activity, an immersive destination, and a powerful economic engine rooted in environmental, social, and economic wellness. SWA’s master plan follows four key principles: ec...
South Waterfront Greenway
A bold new plan for the area along the Willamette River includes a 1-1/2 mile extension of the City’s downtown’s parks and the reclamation of the river’s edge for public recreation. Working closely with the City of Portland, developers, and natural resource advocates, the design team devised a rational plan that places access and activity in targeted nodes wit...
Chongqing Dongyuan 1891
This unique linear site is sandwiched between the Yangtze River and Nan Mountain. The design concept of the model area that unites a one-kilometer retail/commercial corridor with four high-rise residences is to create the experience of Shangri-La in an urban center. The spatial layout is characterized by a series of courtyards offering different experiences in...