SWA

Congratulations to our partners at Google on their first mass timber building at 1265 Borregas, designed by an incredible team including MGA | Michael Green Architecture, XL Construction, SERA Architects, Equilibrium Engineering Solutions, Sares Regis Group, and many more. In recent years, mass timber has surged in popularity, combining the unique ability to sequester carbon in a building’s frame with exceptional structural and aesthetic value. At 1265 Borregas, SWA extended these principles from the building into the surrounding landscape, creating a unified identity between architecture and environment that centers ecological stewardship. Incorporating native coastal species like California live oak, sagebrush, and milkweed, the planting design enhances biodiversity, minimizes water use, and provides a refuge for people and pollinators around the building. Wooden site furnishings establish a cohesive material language on the ground plain, further complementing the building materials. Prioritizing connectivity, the site design features multimodal connections to the wider Sunnyvale transit system, encouraging low-carbon commuting for staff and visitors. Capturing the architecture’s warmth and biophilic qualities, SWA’s landscape is designed to create an interconnected experience for employees that blends the built and natural environment. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eHMrpbX9

SWA-designed Maple Terrace wins a PaperCity Magazine Design Award! The project, designed by the Dallas studio, was honored in the Commercial Landscape: Public Space, Monument, Gardens, and Park category. Winners were announced in a ceremony at the Virgin Hotel Ballroom last night. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/es7i6DbR

We asked our four principals in the Laguna Beach studio to reflect on their design process, focusing on their approach to sketching. "My design process always starts with understanding the unique qualities of a place—its physical, cultural, and social layers," Dhaval Barbhaya said. He uses sketches to integrate the project into its environment, balancing context with bold gestures. Xiao Zheng prefers pencils for quick ideas but sticks to pen when drawing for presentations. Xiao likes to "layer sketches to show different design elements, like circulation or planting, which allows me to test and refine overall design patterns." "I grab whatever instrument is handy," Stephen Rydzon shared. Once the initial design is there, he uses a red pencil to hone the design in plan form. "I also like to communicate details with highlights—something about the day-glow aesthetic tracks with my thought process." Click through for an inside look into sketches by Sean O'Malley, Dhaval, Stephen, and Xiao.

It was a pleasure to collaborate with Google on the landscape for their first mass timber building at 1265 Borregas alongside an incredible design team including MGA | Michael Green Architecture, XL Construction, SERA Architects, Equilibrium Engineering Solutions, Sares Regis Group, and many more—complementing the building's architecture with site design, furnishings, native planting, and multimodal connections to Sunnyvale's transit system. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eHMrpbX9

"You know John Wong’s work even if you don’t," writes Timothy Schuler for The Architect's Newspaper. "You’ve seen it if you’ve ever visited the Stanford University campus, where over a span of 30 years Wong has evolved and modernized Frederick Law Olmsted’s historic landscape. Or if you’ve stumbled upon Tulsa’s Guthrie Green, an urban park and outdoor amphitheater that supplies district heating and cooling to the surrounding buildings. Or if you’ve ever seen 'Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol,' in which Tom Cruise is framed by the elliptical landforms of Wong’s groundscape as the actor scales the Burj Khalifa." Reviewing his new monograph for the November issue of AN, Tim spoke with John about nearly 50 years of practice at SWA—and a book that attempted to capture it all in 558 pages, weighing in at 9 to 9.5 pounds. https://lnkd.in/eEnkw6MU

Over the past year, Sarah Fitzgerald (Dallas) and Mariana Ricker (San Francisco) co-led the process underpinning SWA's Climate Action Plan, assembling a firmwide Task Force across eight studios to develop an action list for decarbonization. Each brought their personal experience to the CAP. In 2022, Sarah co-authored ASLA's discipline-wide Climate Action Plan. The following year, Sarah and Anya Domlesky, SWA’s Director of Research, contributed to the 2023 report on Decarbonizing Business Operations. This fall, ASLA published a guide on Decarbonizing the Design Process, co-authored by Mariana, building on her Fellowship research at SWA. Hear about the CAP planning process and check out the full document on SWA's website: https://lnkd.in/eCh-DcHd

"We are now able to see which urban design and landscape architecture approaches are the most impactful in adapting to wildfire" — Anya Domlesky, ASLA, PLA, Director of Research, SWA Landscape architects are conducting research and creating design strategies that can reduce wildfire risk worldwide. SWA’s Playbook for the Pyrocene offers a set of safe, nature-based urban design and landscape architecture approaches. Learn more at asla.org/positive Check in tomorrow as we shift towards solutions that improve community health and well-being while cutting emissions. #ClimateChange #Wildfire #LandscapeArchitecture #UrbanDesign

Today, SWA is proud to announce our Climate Action Plan, outlining strategies that target a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 in alignment with ASLA and IPCC goals and coinciding with COP29. Since SWA’s establishment in 1957, annual global carbon emissions have increased by over 450%. The AEC sector accounts for a staggering 40% of those emissions each year. While landscapes and open spaces contribute a proportionally smaller amount than buildings, landscape architects bring a unique toolkit for climate action—designing projects that sequester carbon, mitigate heat islands, support biodiversity, buffer sea-level rise and flooding, and center climate justice. Incorporating decarbonization strategies across the design process, SWA is developing a benchmarking analysis to measure embodied and sequestered carbon across project typologies, providing design teams with a phase-by-phase toolkit to focus on right-sizing spaces, prioritize low-carbon materials, greenline details and specifications, and more. At a broader scale, the CAP’s aim is to build a “culture of practice” empowering design teams to champion climate solutions within and beyond the firm—demonstrating the impact our field can have in the path to decarbonization. Learn more and read the full plan on our website. https://lnkd.in/eCh-DcHd

Tune in this coming Monday, November 18, to learn how SWA's Playbook for the Pyrocene informed the American Society of Landscape Architects's Climate Action Plan. Launched alongside COP29, the sixth episode features SWA's Anya Domlesky, Director of Research for XL Lab, discussing wildfire-adaptive design and landscape-based solutions to climate change across a variety of case studies from our portfolio. Learn more:?https://lnkd.in/e6pbYqS4

In recognition of their professional excellence, leadership, and contributions to the growth and success of the firm, SWA is pleased to announce the promotion of 14 individuals. Additionally, we welcomed Riley Van Bebber as our Chief Financial Officer/Chief Operating Officer, as of Summer 2024. Congrats to Abdallah Labib, who steps into the role of Co-Managing Principal of SWA/Balsley; to our new Associate Principals: George Kutnar, Josh Lock, Mariana Ricker, Jackson Rollings, and Laura W.; and our new Associates: Claire Adams, Pawida Bualert, Henry Dalton, Shengqian(Chris) He, Andrew Joseph, Joseph Kensel, Michael Q., and Hank Thomas. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eGZbZEgp