SWA Group

SWA Group SWA is a long-standing, employee-owned collective of eight independent studios practicing landscape architecture, planning, and urban design.

At its core, design for sports facilities is about creating symbiosis between gathering spaces—often monolithic and mass...
11/13/2025

At its core, design for sports facilities is about creating symbiosis between gathering spaces—often monolithic and massive in scale—and their context. Today, this presents a volume problem.

In 2024, MLB attracted over 71 million in-person spectators, NFL games brought nearly 19 million fans, NBA arenas reached 98% capacity, and the Paris Olympics sold a historic 12 million tickets. With crowds this large, entertainment districts across the globe are more strained than ever, but also suffer as economic dead zones during periods of dormancy.

Over decades of experience, SWA’s work has transformed fortress-like environments into active destinations that absorb the intensity of game day while functioning year-round as fully integrated neighborhoods. Divided into three overlapping categories—Districts, Stadiums, and Civic projects—these case studies showcase a range of landscape and urban design-driven approaches to sports venues, large and small.

At their largest scale (Districts), major complexes flow into the cities around them, extending into retail, dining, live performance, and residential corridors with a unified identity. At a closer view (Stadiums), landscape serves as the connective tissue between large structures and their immediate surroundings, creating porous edges and spatial logic that reduce crowd friction and logjams, doubling as high-performance urban parks and plazas on off days. Finally, at a community scale (Civic), sports facilities are reimagined as resilience hubs during hurricanes and heatwaves; cultural centers with intergenerational amenities and programming; and straightforward spaces for everyday training supported by elegant, light-on-the-land design.

Read the full story:
https://www.swagroup.com/stories/sports-and-entertainment-districts/

We’re honored to share that UCSD Theater District Living and Learning Neighborhood—a collaboration between HKS, EYRC, Ki...
11/11/2025

We’re honored to share that UCSD Theater District Living and Learning Neighborhood—a collaboration between HKS, EYRC, Kitchell, and SWA—received not one but four honors at the 2025 Design-Build Institute of America National Awards.

Recognized for its student-centered design, emphasis on wellness, and progressive design-build delivery, the project received:

🏆 Award of Excellence in Education
🏆 Best in Design in Architecture
🏆 Best in Teaming/Leadership
🏆 National Award of Merit for Educational Facilities

Navigating the pandemic, supply chain volatility, and a student housing shortage, the project rethinks density and student life without sacrificing quality or long-term maintainability—incorporating shared spaces like meditation pavilions, tea houses, dining areas, and rooftop meeting centers that encourage connection among students, faculty, and visitors.

Congrats to the full team! Read more: https://dbia.org/project/university-of-california-san-diego-theatre-district-living-and-learning-neighborhood/

We're proud to share that three SWA projects were honored in the Engineering News-Record West Awards. In Northern Califo...
10/27/2025

We're proud to share that three SWA projects were honored in the Engineering News-Record West Awards. In Northern California, San Bruno Recreation and Aquatic Center won Best Project in the Sports/Entertainment category, and 1265 Borregas earned an Award of Merit for Office/Retail/Mixed-Use. In Southern California, UCSD Theatre District Living and Learning Neighborhood received two Awards of Merit, for Higher Education/Research and Excellence in Sustainability.

In ENR's Global Best Projects Awards, 1265 Borregas also won Best Green Project.

Winners were profiled in the October print issue of ENR California, now live, and will be honored in award ceremonies in Los Angeles and San Francisco next week.

SWA wishes you a joyful Diwali and a prosperous New Year!
10/20/2025

SWA wishes you a joyful Diwali and a prosperous New Year!

Join us in celebrating the 10th anniversary of Buffalo Bayou Park, which opened in October 2015.For most of the 20th cen...
10/16/2025

Join us in celebrating the 10th anniversary of Buffalo Bayou Park, which opened in October 2015.

For most of the 20th century, Houston turned its back on its primary waterway, treating Buffalo Bayou as little more than a drainage channel even as the city grew and flooding concerns mounted. That changed in 2010, when the Kinder Foundation gave the Buffalo Bayou Partnership a $30 million catalyst gift to transform 2.3 miles of the bayou into civic green space.

Today, the two-and-a-half-mile park’s system of paths, bridges, and varied destinations connects to a growing regional trail system, anchoring Houston’s public realm while connecting downtown to adjacent neighborhoods. It also plays a central role in the city’s resilience to more frequent and intense rain events—strategic design decisions allowed the park to weather multiple major flood events since its opening, and the project has served as an international case study in how flood infrastructure can also serve as park space.

Beloved features include opportunities for boating and cycling, pedestrian bridges, nature play and trails, a skateboard park, a dog park, a restaurant, performance venues, and an immense underground cistern reimagined as an immersive art space. At dusk, residents and visitors amass to watch over 200,000 Mexican free-tailed bats emerge from beneath Waugh Drive Bridge, stippling the night sky.

It’s an understatement to say SWA is proud to have shaped a project so integral to Houston’s civic life, thanks to decades of advocacy and collaboration that continues today.

10/14/2025

This summer, the Ballona Creek Bike Path Extension—a long-anticipated project to close a decades-old gap in Los Angeles’s seven-mile bikeway and pedestrian corridor—secured $6.4 million in funding from the California Transportation Commission (CTC) in a unanimous vote. Designed by SWA in partnership with nonprofit advocacy organization Streets For All, the project will extend the path nearly two miles to the east to Venice and Cochran, getting people from Mid City to West LA and the beach on a car-free path.

Combined with prior commitments from the Southern California Association of Governments (S**G), the City of Los Angeles, and the Culver City - Local Government, a total of $7 million has now been secured to advance environmental clearance and technical design work, bringing the project to shovel-ready status.

Hear from SWA Co-CEO Gerdo Aquino, Councilwoman Heather Hutt, and Founder and CEO of Streets for All Michael Schneider on how the project was revitalized. Learn more about the project: https://www.swagroup.com/stories/ballona-creek-bike-path-extension-approval/

Special thanks to the Cities of Culver City and Los Angeles, former Culver City Mayor Thomas Small, Supervisor Holly Mitchell, the Baldwin Hills Conservancy (Urban Watersheds Conservancy), City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering, LADOT Official, Metro, S**G, and CTC.

10/09/2025

Since opening in late 2024, River Street Marketplace has become one of Orange County’s most beloved destinations. SWA led the site’s rezoning and planning process over nine years to align the design with community values and San Juan Capistrano’s historic, agrarian character.

Gravel pathways, native plantings, and shaded courtyards evoke the area’s rustic heritage, while flexible outdoor spaces invite dining, play, and informal gathering. Reclaimed wood and materials were sourced within 300 miles of the site in Los Rios, reducing embodied carbon and deepening the project’s connection to place.

The final design, developed in collaboration with RSM Design and Bickel Group Architecture, is a community hub that feels both historic and new—grounded in the rhythms of local life, celebrating California’s oldest neighborhood while adapting for its future.

We’re proud to share that Park WellState Nishiazabu was honored in this year's Senior Housing News Architecture & Design...
10/09/2025

We’re proud to share that Park WellState Nishiazabu was honored in this year's Senior Housing News Architecture & Design Awards!

The project—a 36-floor, 421-unit tower overlooking Tokyo's Minato City, enveloped in 2,200 square meters of private gardens—was awarded first place in the International category and second place in the Independent Living category.

Congrats to the team and our fellow awardees!

Learn more here: https://shnawards.com/nominees/park-wellstate-nishiazabu-international/

It’s no secret that corporate campus design has fundamentally changed over the past decade. In the wake of the pandemic,...
10/07/2025

It’s no secret that corporate campus design has fundamentally changed over the past decade. In the wake of the pandemic, the rise of hybrid work has accelerated office reconfigurations to carve out more flexible floorplans and outdoor spaces. At the same time, RTO policies have driven investment in amenities like fitness centers, trails, cafes, childcare, and event spaces to draw employees back to the office.

Research has also underscored the value of nature-rich environments, showing a strong link between biophilic design, stress reduction, and improved cognition. Planting and material selection have shifted in response to a suite of climate risks, too—extreme heat, flooding, and drought—with growing attention toward adaptive plant palettes, shade structures, and stormwater systems. Corporate ESG and climate commitments are influencing mobility, with many campuses prioritizing multimodal paths, EV charging, and walkable layouts that better connect workplaces to their surrounding communities. The list goes on.

At SWA, we see these shifting headwinds as an opportunity to design workspaces that are healthier, more resilient, and more connected to their context—tap through for a few examples among many.

Learn more: https://www.swagroup.com/project/creative-workplace/

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In sequence: Walmart Home Office, Uber Rooftop at Chase Center, Xingfa Cement Plant Renovation, East Evelyn Avenue, 100 Altair, Technology Enterprise Campus, PayPal Headquarters, Samsung Headquarters

We're happy to share that Nantong Waterfront Park—a five-kilometer-long open space along a post-industrial stretch of Ch...
09/26/2025

We're happy to share that Nantong Waterfront Park—a five-kilometer-long open space along a post-industrial stretch of China's Yangtze River designed by SWA Laguna Beach—received a Merit Award in ASLA Southern California's 2025 Design Awards. Congrats to the team and our fellow awardees!

Learn more: https://socal-asla.org/2025-design-awards/

It’s the first week of fall in the northern hemisphere, which means microscopic miracles are beginning to take place in ...
09/25/2025

It’s the first week of fall in the northern hemisphere, which means microscopic miracles are beginning to take place in broad swaths of deciduous forest across the globe.

Behind the obvious spectacle of fall foliage, a cascade of chemical changes occurs—the chlorophyll in leaves, which helps trees absorb energy from sunlight, breaks down to reveal yellow and orange pigments already present beneath. Sugars trapped within the leaves produce new pigments called anthocyanins, which appear dark red, a process more common in trees like oaks and dogwoods.

As our global climate warms and grows more erratic, these familiar rhythms are shifting: summer extends further into fall, frosts are delayed, and irregular rainfall alters the timing and intensity of foliage in areas that traditionally attract leaf peepers. Increasingly, these bursts of color are living records of shifting temperature and moisture for a world in rapid flux, not just a reliable sign of the season, something we should treasure all the more.

Across scales and context, swipe through for a few of these spectacles. In sequence: Ningbo East New Town Civic Plaza, DNP Ichigaya Forest, Hunter’s Point South Park, Poly Tongzhou, Baxter Walk at University of the Pacific, The Clearing: Sandy Hook Memorial, Dallas Arboretum, Xingfa Cement Plant, Ningbo East New Town Civic Plaza

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