SWA Group

10/15/2026

Transforming the shell of a former Folgers factory into an unexpected setting for education and play, the Frank Liu Jr. Academy for Music & Arts (FLAMA) broke ground on October 8. Located along the Buffalo Bayou East corridor in Houston’s East End, the K-8 charter school was designed by OMA and RDLR Architects, with SWA leading the playground landscape design.

Within the factory’s enclosed courtyard, the playground responds to limited space and a hard industrial palette by replacing the floor with poured-in-place rubberized mounds that form soft, dynamic terrain in radiant shades of orange, ochre, and red. The design complements the geometric forms of the windows above. Oblong planting beds at the courtyard entrance guide students and visitors into the play area, while a mural extends the playscape’s colors onto an adjacent vine-accented wall. The narrow courtyard provides respite from the Texas sun, but its low-light conditions called for SWA to create a unique plant palette.

Rather than rely on conventional equipment, the ground plane itself becomes the play structure, carving out spaces for children to climb, roll, gather, and invent their own uses. FLAMA is targeting a fall 2027 opening.
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Rendering by Out of Ram.

10/15/2026

10/15/2026

On the heels of its LEED Silver Certification, our recently unveiled Piedmont Community Pool has been named a Design Award finalist by AIA East Bay, in their Large Civic category. We’re excited to see what happens at the October 22 awards gala at the David Brower Center in Berkeley. If you’re planning to attend too, let us know!

This project’s lush landscape, grand pool deck, and luxurious seating turn a standard pool visit into something special. A project like this one would be impossible without the vision and dedication of so many stakeholders, which here include municipal officials, community advocates, and project donors.

Kudos to the talented team members at ELS and to our consultant team: SWA Group, BKF Engineers, Aquatic Design Group, Forell Elsesser, Guttmann & Blaevoet, Brightworks Sustainability, SGH, mack5, and Steven Winkel. Special thanks to the City of Piedmont, to its project manager Griffin Structures, and to the general contractor Wickman Development and Construction for getting us to the finish line.

10/12/2026

More than 40 years in the making, Riverside Park South reaches completion this fall. The site was once the New York Central Railroad's 60th Street Yard, and later the subject of a succession of competing master plans. Today it stretches 12 blocks along the Hudson between West 59th and 71st Streets. Designed by SWA/Balsley, the park extends the vision that Frederick Law Olmsted established at Riverside Park to the north. It carries forward that park's curving paths and open meadows and adds a contemporary waterfront that honors the site's industrial past.

Much of the design's challenge lies in the grade change between the elevated Upper West Side and the water's edge, a route that passes beneath the Henry Hudson Parkway. The design embraces the covered condition, using it as a transition zone between upland and waterfront.

That underpass is now one of the most active parts of the park, sheltered from sun and rain. Workout areas, basketball courts, playgrounds, swings, a café, and restrooms turn what could have been residual space into a working part of the park's circulation. It reflects SWA's broader view of landscape as infrastructure: reimagining a structure built for cars as a place for people.

10/09/2026

The deep reds of October Glory maples take center stage at Cooley Court, where autumn color glows against the concrete of Stanford Law School. Two bosques, planted two years before the project’s 2018 completion, now frame the view toward Alexander Calder’s Le Faucon and Hoover Tower, adding depth and seasonal drama to the courtyard.

Renovating the landscape around a 1970s SOM-designed brutalist building, SWA collaborated with TOYA Studio to transform the court into an open, light-filled commons. The project relocated the Calder sculpture, introduced a new paving scheme that resolved waterproofing issues, and added walls that define the trees and courtyard. Today the court serves as a hub for student life and the setting for the law school’s graduation ceremony.

10/06/2026

Geography, history, and industrial memory have shaped Yuzhu, a critical freight harbor on the Pearl River. Yuzhu Riverfront Mixed-Use Development builds on that legacy with a north-south framework: a commercial and retail core anchors the waterfront, while the southern district pairs ecological richness with a high-quality residential environment built around health, activity, and sustainability.

In the northern parcel, a diagonal axis cuts through the site as a direct reference to Yuzhu's former port identity, reconnecting the waterfront as a civic stage and drawing movement into the heart of the development. Four thematic plazas anchor the axis, linked by weathering steel lighting elements that begin as a continuous linear band and gradually dissolve into individual nodes. The progression mirrors the site's evolution, from a singular industrial economy to a layered urban future. Integrated with the paving design, the lighting also works as an intuitive wayfinding system throughout the district.

In the residential parcel, the landscape shifts to an organic matrix of flowing, layered spaces that balance energy and calm. Inclusive in program and generous in scale, these environments serve all ages and draw residents into an active, connected community life.

10/01/2026

Once dominated by heat-absorbing asphalt lots, East Evelyn Avenue preserves the original building pads of a generic 1980s office park while replacing six acres of surface parking with shaded courtyards, pollinator meadows, and outdoor workspaces planted with California natives like toyon, yarrow, and blue grama grass. A network of decomposed granite and cast-in-place concrete paths links office entries to a series of outdoor “rooms” with modular seatwalls, shade structures, and new plantings that triple the existing canopy and require 75% less irrigation than the former lawns.

Working closely alongside WRNS Studio and Rockwood Capital, SWA took cues from the surrounding city grid to craft a fluid experience across the irregularly shaped site, reorienting access points along a central pedestrian spine. Nods to the area’s industrial past appear in a palette of raw concrete, wood, and anodized copper—most visibly in a sculptural trellis that anchors the main plaza.

10/01/2026

"The landscape comes last. Power and fiber decide the site. Rack count and cooling decide the building. Fire access, the substation, and circulation decide the layout. By the time the landscape arrives, everything else is placed, and what it inherits is the space in between."

Zhimin Ma and Minghao Zhao, ASLA — landscape designers with SWA Group — analyze the landscapes of data centers in Loudoun County, Virginia, which has the highest concentration of data centers in the world.

Read more in ASLA's THE DIRT: https://bit.ly/4hTbhAk

Image credit: Regional Analysis of Data Center Development in Ashburn, Virginia / Minghao Zhao

09/29/2026

Dallas-Fort Worth is the fastest-growing metro in the country, with several of Dallas' neighboring suburbs ranking among the nation's fastest-growing over the past decade. Closer to the core, growth looks different. As density rises, design has to build upward, weaving greenery and access to nature into the city's vertical fabric. Swipe through to see three of our residential projects in the city proper:

Maple Terrace (slides 1-3), a 1920s Mediterranean-style landmark designed by Alfred Bossom and home to Dallas' first "million-dollar apartment house," has been revitalized with historic preservation at the forefront. Its new amenities, including a fitness center, park space, resort-style pool, pet spa, rooftop terraces, and restaurants, now activate the surrounding property and bring new life to a Dallas icon.

The Sinclair (slides 4-6) transforms a 1970s Pei Cobb office tower in the heart of downtown into a luxury residential address. A 10,000-square-foot arrival garden with reflecting pools and fire pits greets residents at street level, while a 6th-floor pool and residential garden and a 42nd-floor observation garden temper the tower's height and frame views of the city beyond.

East Quarter Mixed-Use (slides 7-9) reconnects two neighborhoods that have been separated for years by derelict blocks and buildings, creating a walkable link of retail, dining, and entertainment between the Deep Ellum Farmers Market and the Arts District. Two historic buildings are preserved, a dog park and new bike lanes are introduced, and an eighth-floor amenity deck offers singular views of the skyline.

09/25/2026

Once a city-owned landfill that closed in 1963, Ferry Point Park's transformation has been decades in the making. In the late 1990s, local developers proposed reclaiming the site for a PGA tournament-level golf course, agreeing to build and maintain a seven-acre community park and a separate waterfront park as part of the deal. SWA/Balsley was brought on to design the out-of-play environments that define and embrace the resulting 27-hole Jack Nicklaus signature golf course, the surrounding community, and the East River.

Completed in 2013 along the shoreline adjacent to the Whitestone Bridge, the crescent-shaped waterfront park restores a coastal ecosystem that now supports native songbird habitats. A natural shoreline promenade is layered with secondary and tertiary path systems, threading through restored native grassland habitats and nodes of passive recreation. To the east, Ferry Point Waterfront Park extends the design nearly 0.7 miles further along the East River, forming an ecological continuation of the original park.

Nearly 15 years since completion, the waterfront park stands as a long-term case study in adaptive reuse—demonstrating how a former industrial site can support both habitat restoration and sustained public use at scale.