SWA Group

02/26/2026

We're honored to share that Live Oak Park Playground received a Park Planning Award of Excellence from the California Park & Recreation Society.

“The opening of the Live Oak Park Playground has been a celebration for the City,” said Temple City Mayor Cynthia Sternquist. “This playground is a place to honor imagination and where communities gather to create memories.”

Recognizing the team's commitment to community engagement, aesthetic quality, long-term functionality, and inclusive access, the award recognizes the playground for thoughtful planning and lasting impact.

Learn more:
https://www.swagroup.com/projects/temple-city-playgrounds/

02/24/2026

Since 2007, SWA has invited staff to explore research topics that expand the discipline through innovation, led by the annual Patrick T. Curran Fellowship. In this interview with Co-CEO Gerdo Aquino, he talks about the inception of the program, created in honor of a talented SWA designer who passed away. Recounting their early days working in the Sausalito studio, then reuniting in LA, Gerdo provides insight into his relationship with Patrick and how his dedication to research inspired a core aspect of the firm.

Since its inception, over 65 fellows have produced over 50 research theses ranging from practice-based research to AI to exploring SWA's ESOP structure. For 2025's selection, San Francisco Marketing Manager Jennifer Hung and Dallas Associate Hank Thomas turned the focus inward, interviewing senior and mid-level designers to understand the details behind SWA's longevity and how to continue this success into the future.

Stay tuned for more.

02/17/2026

Happy Year of the Fire Horse from SWA.

02/14/2026

Spanning 14 acres along Brays Bayou, Club Creek Basin Park layers green infrastructure with public space, draining a key segment of Southwest Houston’s 100-year floodplain. Conceived as part of a broader regional flood mitigation strategy, the park is organized around a 120-acre-foot terraced detention basin, a 2-acre permanent pool, and constructed wetlands that slow, filter, and absorb stormwater.

Completed in 2023, the park weaves multi-use trails into the larger Brays Bayou Greenway and regional trail systems, alongside elevated playgrounds, fitness areas, and open lawns designed to remain accessible during heavy rain events. A core feature is the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial, honoring 543 fallen service members from the Houston area with a black marble centerpiece and steel backdrop.

The project recently received multiple local honors, including two ULI Development of Distinction Awards—tying for the Open Space Award and earning the 2026 People’s Choice Award—as well as recognition from the Houston-Galveston Area Council for Projects Over $500,000.

Congratulations to the full team, including the City of Houston, the Southwest Houston Redevelopment Authority (TIRZ 20), Millis Development & Construction, Walter P. Moore, E&C Engineers & Consultants, Houston City Council District J, and the Harris County Flood Control District.

02/11/2026

This year, SWA Co-CEO Gerdo Aquino joins the jury for AN's 2026 Best of Practice Awards, sharing his perspective on contemporary design culture and the responsibilities of practice today. Read more in The Architect's Newspaper.

Gerdo Aquino, co-CEO and principal of SWA, is a juror for The Architect’s Newspaper’s Best of Practice Awards. AN spoke with Aquino on what goes into designing a practice and what he’ll be looking for in submissions.

02/03/2026

For The Architect's Newspaper, Dan Roche covers the upcoming renovation of Portsmouth Square, San Francisco's oldest public space, which breaks ground this summer.

For decades, the square has been a remarkable exercise in density at the heart of Chinatown, hosting over 300 events a year alongside everyday public use—many of which our Principal-in-Charge, Jim Lee, attended while growing up nearby.

Led by SWA and MEI Architects for the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, the project represents a once-in-a-generation reinvestment in the neighborhood, recalibrating the space to meet contemporary needs while honoring its deep cultural and historical significance—and a legacy project for our San Francisco studio, located just a few blocks away.

A pedestrian bridge that was built over Kearny Street in the 1960s—derided as San Francisco’s “most hated bridge”—will be removed from Portsmouth Square, affording more recreational space.

02/03/2026

Too often, research campuses turn inward. At The Landing, a new life sciences district in Burlingame’s Bayfront, the design team took a different approach: bringing public life into the heart of a biotech campus.

Featuring a half-acre public plaza, 27-foot kinetic sculpture, and weekday café open to the broader community, The Landing opened last summer as part of the district’s ongoing transformation. Led by Perkins&Will with SWA as landscape architect, the campus centers on accessibility, ecological function, and experience—prioritizing a welcoming public realm alongside laboratory and research space.

The plaza is anchored by “The Rhythm of Discovery,” a 27-foot-tall kinetic sculpture by Oregon artist CJ Rench, flanked by two 60-foot murals by San Francisco–based artist Nicole Mueller—each helping define the project’s identity from both up close and afar, including views from Highway 101. A newly opened café, The Apron, operates weekdays, serving coffee, breakfast, and lunch to tenants and the public. The campus also connects directly to the 360-mile San Francisco Bay Trail and nearby Caltrain, BART, SamTrans, and other transit options, linking The Landing to a regional mobility network.

02/02/2026

In the heart of Westside Los Angeles County, a mile-long runway cuts through the city. For over a century, the Santa Monica Airport launched aircraft over the city. In 2014, voters approved a measure limiting new development on airport land — prioritizing parks, open space, and recreational facilities for its future. Although it’s still in limited operation, the airport’s full closure is expected at the end of 2028. Over the past two years, the City has undertaken a robust engagement process to develop a vision for the site’s future as a “great park” for Santa Monica.

SWA’s 2026 Summer Student Program, hosted in our Los Angeles studio, takes this once-in-a-generation civic transition as its focus. Over eight weeks, selected students from across the U.S. will examine how large urban parks are conceived, funded, and implemented in partnership with agencies and communities—grappling with the scale, complexity, and political realities of converting an active airfield into an enduring public realm.

The program is from June 1–July 31. Participants receive a stipend and housing in Los Angeles for the full duration. Submissions are due on March 7.

To apply, visit the link in our bio. Please direct any questions to 2026summerprogram@swagroup.com and review the application in full before reaching out.

https://www.swagroup.com/about/students/

01/28/2026

In New York Magazine/Curbed, critic Justin Davidson highlights Hunter's Point South Park, designed by SWA/Balsley and Weiss/Manfredi, among the best New York architecture and design of the past decade—a profound honor and great company.

"Along a shoreline that was once forgotten and polluted, piers have been repurposed for sports, meetups, and solitary retreats—activities that would have been inconceivable a century ago when the waterfront was a rough, male, crowded, dangerous, and frenetic place," Davidson writes.

At Hunter's Point, "a pathway meanders picturesquely through tidal wetlands, around the headland at Newtown Creek, and up to a cantilevered platform that enacts an ancient outer-borough yearning for the Oz across the East River."

Over the past decade, the buildings that have stood out embrace the city’s topography and spirit.

01/15/2026

Today, another peek into the recently completed Nantong Waterfront Park.

Located at the confluence of the Tonglü Canal and Rengang River with the Yangtze, the park spans 171 acres of former industrial waterfront. Just inland, SWA designed a series of oblique, blossom-shaped meadows that have become seasonal destinations for nearby residents—flushing pink with muhly grass in early fall, shifting to warm bands of coreopsis, rudbeckia, gaillardia, and cosmos in summer, followed by early spring blooms of Chinese violet cress and poppies.

The planting is anchored by structural grasses like miscanthus and fountain grass, selected for durability and long seasonal performance. Together, the meadows support a bustling network of pollinators and form the civic heart of the new park system, helping reframe Nantong’s waterfront as an accessible public landscape for picnics, sports, and everyday use.

01/14/2026

Not too many years ago, it might have been unconventional for a Fortune 500 company to invest in hundreds of acres of green space for its headquarters. Today, many such campuses exist around the world, blurring the lines between indoors and outdoors—a trend accelerated by post-pandemic shifts in how workers value flexibility, access to nature, and the everyday experience of work.

Walmart’s new Home Office campus in Bentonville is an unusually explicit expression of that shift, nesting mass-timber facilities by Gensler in a 350-acre campus inspired by native Arkansan ecosystems—highlands forest, bluestem prairie, seasonal wetlands, and pollinator habitat. Over 13 acres of constructed lakes and bioswales at the North and South end of campus collect, filter, and redistribute stormwater across a vast irrigation system, providing over 52 million gallons of water annually and minimizing impacts to the city’s potable water supply. More than a headquarters, the campus is a major regional investment for Northwest Arkansas at large and a hub for thousands of associates living within biking distance of work, providing climate-friendly commuting options and setting an ambitious target of 10% of staff biking to work.

Learn more:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattshaw/2025/01/29/inside-walmarts-massive-nature-filled-new-headquarters/

01/03/2026

A year after the devastating L.A. fires, SWA's Director of Climate Strategy Jonah Susskind sat down with Architectural Record's Joann Gonchar to discuss the role of landscape architects in designing fire-adaptive communities—and the tools we already have at our fingertips.

"We design parks, but we don’t always talk about them as emergency refuge areas," Jonah describes. "We can design parks as emergency refuges and also as staging areas for firefighting personnel. Trails can serve as a multimodal mobility corridors or as evacuation routes. This is the type of layering that we need to do more of."

RECORD deputy editor Joann Gonchar talks with the landscape architecture firm's director of climate strategy, who served as one of the principal investigators for its 'Playbook for the Pyrocene.'