Qingdao is the birthplace of Tsingtao Beer and, for over 20 years, the Tsingtao International Beer Festival was held on this site. SWA played a crucial role in preserving the community’s cultural landmark status as the land surrounding the festival site was transformed into a new urban campus and transit hub. Recently completed, the Qingdao SIIC International Finance Center blends office towers, hotels, parks, and plazas into a business community with inviting gathering space for office workers and adjacent residential neighborhoods.
The plan’s arrangement evenly modulates building and open space to create a porous, public campus that activates street-level interaction within comfortable, verdant surroundings. Interstitial landscape space is designed to easily transform into temporary performance venues, night markets, and entertainment hubs during annual festivals and special events.
Xiamen Air Headquarters
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, med...
Hunter's Point Shipyard and Candlestick Point
Perched on the edge of San Francisco Bay, the Hunters Point Shipyard was an important naval manufacturing center for the WWI and WWII war efforts. The abandoned shipyard and Candlestick Point were combined into a new, mixed-use residential, retail and light industry development—the largest in San Francisco since WWII. Thomas Balsley Associates collaborated wit...
Williams Square
For decades, Williams Square has been the walkable “living room” for Irving, Texas’s Las Colinas community. The plaza’s iconic bronze mustang sculptures, designed by artist Robert Glen, are among the state’s most iconic landscape features, speaking to the state’s identity and history.
SWA’s engagement with the plaza is longstanding, dating back to the 1...
Kasumigaseki Plaza Renewal
Tokyo’s first high-rise and architectural landmark is located in the heart of downtown, where government and major private business offices are concentrated. Urban growth changed the dynamics of the building’s surroundings and left its public spaces ineffective and barren. The addition of new mixed-use buildings provided the owners with an opportunity to bring...