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 1980s. Initially, the plaza needed to take on a new life as a mixed-use environment. More recently, a growing number of live-work-play residents inspired a new role for Williams Square: one that retained its identity while promoting walkability and active transportation. The original redesign added green space and outdoor seating areas to encourage residents, visitors, and office workers to linger in an identifiably Texan landscape amid sleek new office buildings – recent efforts have reinforced these aspects.
With recent design updates, SWA has refurbished the plaza’s horse sculptures within their signature water feature, refreshing their patina and profile while maintaining the integrity of the original vision. A new overlook and additional shade features have been added to the site, making Williams Square a more fully activated destination that is linked to its surrounding district and continues to serve its ever-growing community. The site’s plantings remain native and local, with live oaks prominent, while the granite plaza and artfully eroded watercourse recall and celebrate the Texan landscape heritage.
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 ...
Culver Steps and Main Plaza
As cities consider the future of their streets in light of pandemic-inspired innovations and federal infrastructure investment, placemaking solutions can help communities achieve more value from public rights-of-way.
In Culver City, California, landscape design born of collaboration from the public and private sectors has resulted in a lively and access...
Zhenghong Grand Plaza
Located in a rapidly growing tech and innovation district in Zhengzhou, Zhenghong Grand Plaza reflects a shift in Chinese commercial development toward youth, cultural experiences, and integrated public realm design. Spanning 9 acres along a key corridor in the city’s Commercial Business District, the plaza frames a new RTKL-designed mixed-use center that give...
MKT Mixed-Use Development
The MKT mixed-use development is a truly Houstonian take on adaptive reuse, with a tilt wall industrial office park. Located in the chic and rapidly upscaling neighborhood of Houston Heights, this industrial, 1970s-era industrial remnant is being transformed: the buildings’ concrete shells remain, but are bisected by pathways that seem to surgically remove the...