The University of Houston Law Center, established in 1947, has earned national recognition, with three of its programs ranked in the top 10 by U.S. News and World Report. Despite these academic accolades, the original Law Center building faced significant challenges due to its location and design. Situated in Houston’s low-lying coastal prairie ecoregion, the partially underground structure was particularly vulnerable to frequent flooding and water damage.
To address these issues, SWA developed a landscape solution that not only resolves the site’s practical challenges but also enhances the student experience, promotes sustainability, and supports future campus growth. The landscape design, created for the new LEED Silver-certified building, extends the modern architectural aesthetic into the surrounding outdoor spaces while focusing on improving student life.
A key project goal was to seamlessly integrate the new Law Center into the broader campus and lay a foundation for future development. To mitigate flood risks, the design elevated the building footprint above the floodplain. The surrounding landscape was contoured to channel stormwater into native vegetation and an on-site detention meadow, creating a natural stormwater management system. Additionally, the preservation of the campus’s iconic oak trees was a central design feature.
The landscape plan seamlessly extends indoor gathering spaces into the outdoors, offering diverse environments for student and faculty activities. These areas, designed with native plants and strategic planting arrangements, create immersive experiences that encourage ecological awareness and interaction with nature.
By integrating hardscape elements, native plants, and stormwater management strategies, the landscape design supports a wide variety of activities while promoting sustainability. It enhances campus life aesthetically and functionally, with the detention basin serving both practical and visual purposes.
Stanford Branner Hall
Branner Hall is a three-story undergraduate dormitory built in 1924 by Bakewell and Brown, prominent architects of the time who were also responsible for San Francisco’s City Hall. The renovation design creates two significant courtyards: an entrance courtyard flanked with four-decades-old magnolia trees shading a seating area and an interior courtyard with a ...
Medgar Evers College
This new quad provides a unifying pedestrian connection between Bedford and Franklin Avenues and between existing and new campus buildings, finally providing the campus with a cohesive identity and sense of place. With the dramatic transformation of a parking lot into more campus green space comes the opportunity to integrate a series of sustainability strateg...
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for the Visual Arts
The original Stanford campus museum was damaged in an earthquake in 1989. With help from major namesake donors to the museum, significant site improvements, expansion and seismic renovation improvements were accomplished. SWA provided master plan updates and full landscape architectural services including pedestrian pathways; two major terraces for displaying ...
Northwest Vista College
Northwest Vista College is situated in the oak covered hills west of San Antonio, with beautiful views toward the city and surrounding valley. Previously the design team completed an extensive master plan that accommodated for the expansion of the college facilities to three times its current size. The design seeks to sensitively integrate the nearly 400,000 s...