After it was decided to locate the main concert venue on the building’s top floor to create a covered indoor/outdoor public realm, SWA designed the entire ground level of this venue for traditional Cantonese opera, including a dramatic, covered open-air landscape space. There, an urban stage facilitates movement, provides a gathering space, and enhances the visitor experience, while harmonizing with the architecture. The concept of “Qi” (flow) is expressed in materials, colors, forms, and textures united throughout. At three main entry areas on the ground floor, the façade was lifted to allow access. SWA worked on the grading and employed sloping planes with a grand curving stairway/ramp/amphitheater to connect them, also determining the levels for architectural space at the sides. The box office exists in the space below the landscape amphitheater seating. Groups of trees at each entry and in the central space bring the outdoors in. Outside, SWA designed paving for the first and second floors of the building as well as two outdoor gardens flanking the main performance hall on the 4th (top) floor. The bold upward move allowed space for a new entrance to the subway and the creation of an outdoor urban living room/garden stepped back from the heavily trafficked street. A parterre of planting and seating there provide separation as well as a dedicated entryway setting. An amphitheater with an outdoor performance area caps off this unique urban destination for the West Kowloon Cultural District.
Nasu Highland
SWA collaborated with the architect to provide site planning, schematic landscape design and design development for this brand new membership clubhouse facility with an 18-hole golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr., International. The development includes a major arrival entry with a stone podium surrounded by a fountain pool. The clubhouse is surrou...
Gantry Plaza State Park
Once a working waterfront teeming with barges, tugboats, and rail cars, the Hunter’s Point shoreline slowly succumbed to the realities of the Post-Industrial Age and this spectacular site was left to deteriorate. Thomas Balsley Associates, together with Weintraub di Domenico, envisioned Gantry Plaza State Park as a place that celebrates its past, future, skyli...
2010 Asian Games Village
SWA collaborated with the Guangzhou Urban Planning Design & Survey Institute on a new urban design concept for the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games. Situated between mountains to the North and the Pearl River to the South, Guangzhou has a unique condition, which allows for the use of existing water channels for the framework of a new open space network. By abstr...
Shekou Promenade
A gateway for China’s open-door policy, Shekou has revitalized its fragmented and hazardous coastline into a dynamic six-kilometer promenade that masterfully captures the area’s cultural and natural essence.
The promenade repurposes the disconnected former industrial waterfront into a celebrated open space system with new recreation programs...