United Daily News Plaza is located on one of the busiest streets of Taipei – Chong Shao East Road. It is a 6,000-square-meter mixed-use project with two building sites. Site A consists of a mixed-use building with a bank and cafe on the first floor, and service apartments on all the floors above. Site B is a residential building. The main design concept creates an urban forest, unifying the two sites to give a distinctive image within an extremely busy urban context. The “forest” is created with newly planted street trees at the perimeter of the site, especially as an allee along Chong Shao East Road. To ensure the trees grow to a sufficient size, SWA worked with the architect to reserve 1.5 meter soil depth on top of the parking structure. Permeable paving, a subsurface drainage system were are also introduced to optimize growth. Densely planted cherry trees in the reading garden further impart the feeling of being surrounded by forest; chinaberry trees interspersed in the main plaza provide shade in the summer and a change of character throughout the seasons.
Since the owner is one of the earliest newspaper groups in Taiwan, the landscape design is also inspired by the traditional printing press system. The traditional Chinese printing press consist of square blocks, this inspiration has been transformed into a modular layout of the site, and also carried through in the understory planting palette, mist fountain, and bench design.
KGI Financial Headquarters
KGI Financial Headquarters is in the heart of the Taipei Metropolitan area, along a 70-meter-wide, tree-lined boulevard. The design focuses on creating harmony between people and the environment. To preserve four heritage trees on the site, the buildings were set back, and excavation was minimized to provide an optimal environment for these trees. The resultin...
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...
Qingdao SIIC International Financial Center
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 ...
Kingold Century Centre
This new mixed-use development features a complex program that includes a hotel, rental space for other companies, eateries, service apartments, and retail facilities. SWA’s design challenge was to create a common space that can be enjoyed by the disparate users on-site at any given time. A common plaza includes multiple restaurants on a terraced platform that...