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.
RIT Global Village and Global Plaza
Global Village, a pedestrian-only infill neighborhood adjacent to Rochester Institute of Technology’s academic core, and its mixed-use centerpiece, Global Plaza, create a social heart for 17,200 students and 3,600 faculty and staff. The landscape architects and architects collaborated on an urban design that establishes multiple “crossroads” ...
CREATE Campus, National University of Singapore
CREATE, the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise, is an international research campus and innovation hub at the National University of Singapore. Home to a vibrant scientific community, CREATE hosts the National Research Foundation, interdisciplinary research centers from top universities, and corporate laboratories such as the Singapore...
Scripps College Residence
The landscape design for the new residence hall builds on the Scripps College campus tradition of landscaped courtyards formed by buildings and circulation corridors. In doing so, the design helps to establish a new east-west axis connecting the main campus to future recreation facilities to the east. The project also improves interrelationships and connection...
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...