The “Grand Candela” commemorates the victims and survivors of the August 2019 mass shooting tragedy at Walmart’s Cielo Vista store. Inspired by the motif of an everlasting candle and set in a plaza within the store’s parking lot, the memorial offers a dedicated place of healing and remembrance. Columns of perforated metal, one for each life lost, are joined together in a luminous circle of unity that rises thirty feet– high enough to be seen by the impacted community residing on both sides of the border.
During the day, the metal structure glimmers in the sunlight, the apertures of the individual columns become more discernable upon approach. Programmed lighting at night lends a healing effect, with a votive-inspired glow brightening during the day and dimming to soft vigilance at night. The memorial reads as a luminous beacon, a healing reminder of the community’s oneness.
Dallas Arboretum: A Tasteful Place
A year-round “food oasis” awaits visitors at A Tasteful Place, a new edible/display garden within the Dallas Arboretum. A continuation of SWA’s Arboretum work (which includes Red Maple Rill and the Children’s Garden), A Tasteful Place provides visual and hands-on education about plants and herbs that can be used in visitors’ daily cooking and explored in...
Atherton Civic Center and Library
The vision for the Atherton Civic Center landscape is a community space set in a peaceful garden, designed to enhance the local ecology and mitigate the urban impacts of the new development. The landscape design integrates new architecture into the wider Atherton community through a strolling garden approach to site circulation. The planting areas are comprise...
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
This office building’s roof garden celebrates a potent image of the native Texas landscape: the level, grass-covered plains emerging from a wooded riparian area. A design vocabulary of native, drought-tolerant plant materials, especially selected to react to light and air movement, reinforces this design approach. The project serves as a two-acre rooftop garde...
California Academy of Sciences
One of San Francisco’s first sustainable building projects, the California Academy of Sciences supports a stunning 2.5-acre green roof. Emphasizing habitat quality and connectivity, the project has received two LEED Platinum certifications.
The building’s architectural team, the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW), invited SWA Group and horticultural c...