The Xiamen Airlines campus comprises three large buildings: the corporate headquarters, a business hotel, and a commercial center. To unify the site, the landscape spans across the campus as it transitions to express the distinct character of the various programs and patronage. Lush perimeter terraces adorn the stately Foster + Partners-designed buildings, mediating the significant grade change across the site. Beyond the building cohort, the site opens into a grand arrival space, which serves the hotel and headquarters entrances, and a large central courtyard. While each space is unique in scale and function, they collectively reflect the surrounding island context through dramatic water features, native trees and planting, and stonework inspired by the local Wu Yi Mountains.
Lake Park Business Center
The site design is charged with a strong geometric pattern formed through large swaths of native planting, decking, and sunken courts. A rectangular grid is enhanced by intersecting materials, textures, light, and shade. Subtle grade changes create opportunities for seat walls and sunken gardens. The intimate spaces that result provide for gathering, conversa...
San Antonio Station
San Antonio Station is a landscape and architectural retrofit project that transforms an introverted site into an open, connected, and flexible campus landscape. Originally Mayfield Mall, California’s first enclosed shopping mall, the reinvigorated site is named after its proximity to a Caltrain station. The property boasts 500,000 sf of ready-built offi...
Gubei Gold Street
SWA was selected to conceptualize, design, and realize a rare find in bustling Shanghai—a pedestrian mall (Gold Street). The corridor occupies three city blocks, is flanked by 20-story high-rise residential towers with retail at street level and book-ended by SWA-designed parks. Creating an iconic presence and enlivening the area, the mall features plazas, fou...
Huamao Center
Huamao Center adds a major civic destination to the edge of Suzhou’s old town. Occupying 23.5 acres along the historic Shantang Canal, the project layers retail, office, and hospitality space into a human-scaled district rooted in the area’s history of water-based commerce, known for its classic Jiangnan water-town architectural style, with narrow lanes and st...