Branner Hall is a three-story undergraduate dormitory built in 1924 by Bakewell and Brown, prominent architects of the time who were also responsible for San Francisco’s City Hall. The renovation design creates two significant courtyards: an entrance courtyard flanked with four-decades-old magnolia trees shading a seating area and an interior courtyard with a fountain, creating space for students to gather. In addition, a barbecue area was recreated in a space that once held a rose garden. The design addresses critical Stanford site issues such as providing bike parking facilities, reconfiguring existing vehicular parking, and renovating the courtyards and peripheral landscape spaces.
Revisiting SunCity Kashiwa
Elderly residents at SunCity Kashiwa are no longer at a loss for dinner conversation: an underutilized terrace outside their extensive ground-level common spaces now features a dramatic pond and mountain-inspired rock formation with multiple cascading waterfalls. Everyone wants a window seat. The striking water feature crowns a new four-season view garden desi...
SunCity Tower Kobe
Kobe has a unique geographical context in Japan, with breathtaking views both inland to Mt. Rokko and to the broad expanse of Osaka Bay to the south. The landscape design of SunCity Tower Kobe, a landmark senior community in this newly developed city district, celebrates this environment. The tower is tucked into the northwest corner of the site, setting it aw...
Kingold Century Centre
This new mixed-use development features a complex program that includes a hotel, rental space for other companies, eateries, service apartments, and retail facilities. SWA’s design challenge was to create a common space that can be enjoyed by the disparate users on-site at any given time. A common plaza includes multiple restaurants on a terraced platform that...
University of Houston Law Center
The University of Houston Law Center, established in 1947, has earned national recognition, with three of its programs ranked in the top 10 by U.S. News and World Report. Despite these academic accolades, the original Law Center building faced significant challenges due to its location and design. Situated in Houston’s low-lying coastal prairie ecoregion...