Artfully Sustainable Landscape 
{"autoplay":"true","autoplay_speed":"8000","speed":"1000","arrows":"true","dots":"false","loop":"true","nav_slide_column":5,"rtl":"false"}
{"autoplay":"true","autoplay_speed":"8000","speed":"1000","arrows":"true","dots":"false","loop":"true","nav_slide_column":5,"rtl":"false"}

DETAILS

LocationMonterrey, Mexico
ClientUniversidad de Monterrey
Size247 acres

The project focuses on improving the sustainability of the 247-acre campus, designing a shift from a vehicular orientation to one that encourages pedestrian, bicycle, and transit use. Site design strategies employ indigenous plant materials and natural water retention and filtration for low-maintenance landscaping. Phase 1 includes site design for one of Latin America’s most architecturally significant buildings, by Tadao Ando: Centro Roberto Garza Sada de Arte, the Gate of Creation, won Wallpaper magazine’s Best Building of 2014 Award. Phase 2 of the project addresses A) the campus threshold and related security issues; B) a dynamic plaza space that ties together a future performing arts center and a future joint campus/community fitness complex; C) another plaza space at the heart of the campus that creates a connection between the Campus Student Center and the Rectoria, the seat of the school administration; and D) reclamation of a central green space that allows for more programmed usage. The project has LEED certification in progress for the Gate of Creation area.

Related Projects

Medgar Evers College

This new quad provides a unifying pedestrian connection between Bedford and Franklin Avenues and between existing and new campus buildings, finally providing the campus with a cohesive identity and sense of place. With the dramatic transformation of a parking lot into more campus green space comes the opportunity to integrate a series of sustainability strateg...

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

This project regenerates a spectacular, historic cliff-side waterfront site by activating it with new purpose. Working carefully to interweave layers of preservation and natural beauty, the building and landscape work together to leave a light footprint. Today, a distinctive global campus honors the history of its earlier occupation while providing inspiration...

UC Davis West Village

UC Davis West Village is a new 225-acre development in Davis, California, that responds to a substantial growth in the number of students, faculty and staff living on the University’s campus. The city of Davis is a unique and cherished community, and great care was taken throughout the design and planning process to pay homage to its history and culture. The n...

Shanghai International Dance Center

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...

Stanford Hoover Institution Traitel Building

The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is a public policy research organization promoting the principals of individual, economic, and political freedom. CAW and SWA collaborated as a design team to create a building and site that helped promote research collaboration through open site connections and workspace.

SWA focused on a site design that s...

Medgar Evers College

This new quad provides a unifying pedestrian connection between Bedford and Franklin Avenues and between existing and new campus buildings, finally providing the campus with a cohesive identity and sense of place. With the dramatic transformation of a parking lot into more campus green space comes the opportunity to integrate a series of sustainability strateg...

Soka University

When Japan-based Soka Gakkai International, one of the world’s largest lay Buddhist organizations, decided to establish a fully accredited liberal arts university in southern Orange County, SWA joined with the architects to create a setting that expresses the goals of the new university. Soka means “to create value” and the ideal of Soka education is to foster...

Stanford Branner Hall

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 ...