Inspired by the idea of movement, this collaboration with Studios Architecture achieves an artful harmony of building with landscape, program with site. The image of a dancer in grand jete kindled the designers’ imaginations and served as the project’s organizing idea. Asia’s first professional dance complex is tucked between a freeway, a subway station and a park at a prominent edge of Shanghai. The project’s scheme integrates historic buildings, and provides an appropriate separation of public and performance spaces from private living and educational spaces as well as a functional and ceremonial arrival and drop-off area. At the large central plaza, a dramatic interactive fountain welcomes visitors and creates a sense of drama for public performances. The feature may be shut off to create outdoor space for larger public gatherings. The plaza provides access to the Center’s four new buildings, each with its own distinctive outdoor courtyard. Courtyards are carved into the landscape, with the new spaces offering a variety of experiences for learning and performance. In this new amenity for the public, curving bands of paving, along with rows of trees, hedges and promenades sweep through the landscape, where seating and water features welcome visitors from the surrounding city.
Alief Park and Neighborhood Center
Located in West Houston, the Alief Neighborhood Center and Park serves one of the city’s most diverse communities. Over 90 languages are spoken in Alief, which is home to first-generation immigrants from across the world and refugees from as far away as Vietnam and close as Louisiana—especially in the wake up Hurricane Katrina, when many families made a ...
Scripps College Residence
The landscape design for the new residence hall builds on the Scripps College campus tradition of landscaped courtyards formed by buildings and circulation corridors. In doing so, the design helps to establish a new east-west axis connecting the main campus to future recreation facilities to the east. The project also improves interrelationships and connection...
Stanford Toyon Hall
Toyon Hall, a significant historic building originally designed by Bakewell and Brown Architects in 1922, is a three-story structure centered around a magnificent formal courtyard with arcades and arches. The purpose of the project was to preserve, maintain and enhance the building and site. SWA scope of work included evaluation of existing site conditions and...
Westmark School
Westmark is a private, second-through-12th-grade school focused on providing quality education to students with learning differences. The project itself has been divided into five separate phases, which will include site renovations for classrooms, courtyards, playgrounds, etc. The school provides a unique student experience that re-envisions traditional educa...