SWA Group

SWA Group SWA is a long-standing, employee-owned collective of eight independent studios practicing landscape architecture, planning, and urban design.

Since its founding in the early 1900s, Burlingame lacked a signature downtown open space. In 2009, the mayor and council...
06/04/2026

Since its founding in the early 1900s, Burlingame lacked a signature downtown open space. In 2009, the mayor and council kicked off an initiative to make downtown more pedestrian-friendly, including enhancing the Burlingame Avenue retail main street. The capstone of that initiative is the transformation of a one-acre parking lot between Park Road and Lorton Avenue into an outdoor living room—opening in 2026 as Burlingame Town Square.

Organized into two distinct zones, the square is overlaid with a grid of deciduous trees, seating clusters, and large custom wood slat benches along the sunny northwest edge. The Park Road half of the square includes flexible space and a small performance area to host markets and festivals, while the Lorton Avenue half features communal tables and outdoor games. Flanking curbs are designated for drop-off, supporting the Square as a natural meeting and socializing spot downtown.

Midway through the square, a water feature clad with angled panels of cast dichroic glass shifts from icy white to aqua, gold, and royal blue depending on sun angle and viewing position, screening a public restroom. Throughout, the design features a warm modern design vocabulary with a palette of oranges, reds, and rusts recalling the brick façades and outdoor dining along Burlingame Avenue. After dark, theater-grade projectors wash the square’s main walk with a shimmering light artwork evoking Burlingame Creek, now culverted below ground.

Read more on our website: https://www.swagroup.com/projects/burlingame-town-square/

06/02/2026

"Halperin Park represents Dallas at its best," writes The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board this week, following the park's first open weekend.

Since opening on May 9, Halperin Park has already hosted dozens of events. At the opening, celebrations were kicked off by the Townview Marching Band and Greiner Mariachi Band, kids cooled off in the interactive water feature, and the community watched a ribbon-tying ceremony, celebrating the historic reconnection of Oak Cliff.

Built on a structural deck over I-35E between Ewing and Marsalis Avenues, the park restores a connection across a freeway that divided this neighborhood for decades. Project leaders estimate the park could eventually attract more than 2 million visitors annually and generate $1 billion in economic impact over its first five years. Stay tuned for ongoing events, including weekly workout classes, a rotation of food trucks, and outdoor movie nights.

Opened this past weekend in Houston’s Sunnyside neighborhood, the Hill at Sims transforms a 100-acre stormwater detentio...
06/01/2026

Opened this past weekend in Houston’s Sunnyside neighborhood, the Hill at Sims transforms a 100-acre stormwater detention basin along Sims Bayou into layered flood infrastructure and public parkland, introducing one of the city’s largest new greenspaces.

Designed to hold nearly 325 million gallons of stormwater during severe weather, the project shows how infrastructure can serve a broader purpose in a low-lying Gulf Coast city impacted by flooding, heat, and uneven access to open space. For Sunnyside, where residents have waited nearly 50 years for a major greenspace investment, the park adds trails, gathering spaces, overlooks, nature-based learning areas, and direct connections to the broader bayou trail network.

"The Hill at Sims is a major new chapter in a story Houston has been writing about its bayous for decades," said Matt Baumgarten and Michael Robinson SWA, Principals in SWA’s Houston studio. "When SWA first began work along the bayou system, the city was asking its residents to see water differently, as a resource rather than a risk. This park makes that case powerfully, and we hope it shows cities across the country that flood infrastructure and high-quality civic space don't have to be separate investments."

Led by Harris County Precinct One and Houston Parks Board, the park reflects years of community input, including more than 20 public meetings and feedback from over 700 Sunnyside residents. Its most visible feature is a 60-foot constructed hill with a pavilion and overlook framing views toward Downtown and Uptown.

Across the site, nearly five miles of paved and natural-surface trails link the hill, basin loop, nature paths, water access pier, picnic areas, outdoor classroom, nature pavilion, murals, and a new pedestrian and bicycle bridge connecting to Sims Bayou Greenway and Margaret Jenkins Park.

🔗 Read the full story:
https://www.swagroup.com/stories/hill-at-sims-opens-in-houston/

This weekend, Halperin Park—Dallas’ newest cap park, spanning I-35E adjacent to the Dallas Zoo—opens to the public after...
05/07/2026

This weekend, Halperin Park—Dallas’ newest cap park, spanning I-35E adjacent to the Dallas Zoo—opens to the public after nearly a decade of planning, engagement, and advocacy.

Deeply specific to Oak Cliff in every aspect of its design, Halperin Park is also part of a larger national shift as cities across the U.S. reexamine the legacy of mid-century highway construction and reinvest in public spaces that restore neighborhood connections. In Oak Cliff, this work began with a Community First Plan shaped by the voices and aspirations of over 500 residents, businesses, educators, nonprofits, and community leaders.

Designed by SWA and HKS, the park translates Oak Cliff’s cultural and environmental history into built form, with sculptural landforms recalling the limestone and shale geology beneath the neighborhood, shaping subtle grade changes that guide movement and frame views toward the downtown skyline.

Across the deck, a sequence of public spaces include a walkable promenade and Oak Cliff walk of fame along the original path of 12th Street, mass-timber bandshell and multipurpose pavilion, flexible great lawn, treehouse-inspired playground, perennial gardens, shaded seating, and two water features that extend comfort through North Texas summers.

“Above all, this is a moment to celebrate the people who make up Oak Cliff and Southern Dallas,” said Todd Strawn, Managing Principal of SWA’s Dallas studio. “Halperin Park shows it’s possible to right a past wrong, stitch a neighborhood back together, and center that community’s culture and history throughout the process.”

The park opens to the public on May 9 following a community parade and ribbon-tying ceremony celebrating the historic reconnection of Oak Cliff.

🔗 Read the full story:
https://www.swagroup.com/stories/halperin-park-opens-in-dallas

The first week of June, landscape architects from across the U.S. descend on Detroit for ’s Future Now Summit, a three-d...
05/01/2026

The first week of June, landscape architects from across the U.S. descend on Detroit for ’s Future Now Summit, a three-day event focused on landscape-driven solutions to the climate and biodiversity crisis as well as an array of social and economic pressures shaping our cities and communities.

SWA is leading a number of talks and workshops exploring low-carbon design, extreme heat, Climate Action Plans, and more. Attendees can earn up to 14.75 PDH (LA CES/HSW) over the full summit, including a pick of 30 lightning talks, 24 workshops, and an optional day of field sessions throughout Detroit.

Get tickets and check out the full lineup:
🔗 lafoundation.org/summit

Where to find us:

Lightning Talk – “Reading the Low-Carbon Landscape”
Jonah Susskind, Director of Climate Strategy
Thursday, June 4, 12:14 pm

Workshop – “Shade for All: Design for Equity in the Urban Heat Era”
Qiaoqi Dai & Han Fu, Associates, SWA LA
Friday, June 5, 11:00 am

Workshop – “Landscape Architecture as Climate Translator”
Mohammad Arabmazar & Claudia Wu, Landscape Designers, SWA Sausalito
Friday, June 5, 1:30 pm

Workshop – “Time to Act: Draft Your Action Plan Now”
Jana Wehby, Principal, SWA LA & Willa DeBoom, Climate & Sustainability Specialist
Friday, June 5, 1:30 pm

For over 40 years, SWA has been a key part of how Dallas builds its public realm through signature projects like the Kat...
04/24/2026

For over 40 years, SWA has been a key part of how Dallas builds its public realm through signature projects like the Katy Trail, Pacific Plaza, and now Halperin Park.

Todd Strawn, named today as Managing Principal of the Dallas studio, has spent over 18 years with the firm helping realize those projects and countless others across hospitality, mixed-use, healthcare, planning contexts, and more—playing a major role in building the studio's reputation for design rigor, technical ex*****on, and long-standing client relationships.

Join us in congratulating Todd, including at the May 9th opening of Halperin Park, a landmark new cap park spanning I-35E in Southern Dallas, many years in the making.

🔗 Read more: https://www.swagroup.com/stories/todd-strawn-managing-principal-swa-dallas/

04/24/2026

For centuries, Belgrade’s Sava River has been an economic lifeline for the city, located at the convergence of three trade routes between Europe and the Balkans—but for much of its modern history, the river has been cut off from public access.

Since opening in 2015, the Sava Promenade has begun to reverse that. Spanning 1.8 kilometers between Branko's Bridge and a railway overpass, the waterfront is punctuated by social hubs every 50 meters: cantilevered paths, river get-downs, restaurants, museums, and retail. A key feature is the 44-story Kula Belgrade, home to the SOM-designed St. Regis Hotel. For its entry plaza, SWA designed paving inspired by the river movement and shoals, forming a geometric sequence that radiates from the tower.

The promenade fits within a larger million-square-meter waterfront development, the single-largest urban regeneration project in Serbia's history. Reconnecting the city with its riverfront, the promenade also improves flood resilience through demarcations along the entire path to provide a temporary flood protection barrier.

One of the more thrilling aspects of landscape is its capacity to connect people and natural systems at a scale few disc...
04/22/2026

One of the more thrilling aspects of landscape is its capacity to connect people and natural systems at a scale few disciplines can match.

What other profession can stitch together communities across hundreds of miles? Bring nature into cities, transforming infrastructure into space for public life? What landscape lacks in singular, meme-able structures it makes up for in complexity and sensitivity to context. So often, our brief is less about how to superimpose a single, recognizable “move” across vastly different sites than it is about slowing down, studying the network of social and environmental systems at play, and tailoring design to make that place richer in experience and function.

Earth Day is now in its 56th year. Conceived in response to a wave of overlapping ecological crises (perhaps most vividly the Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969), it marked a shift in public perception of the environment as a shared responsibility. More than half a century on, the terms have escalated. The climate crisis is warming and acidifying our oceans, intensifying wildfires, and accelerating biodiversity loss, each setting off cascading chain reactions that impact the lives of future generations more each passing day.

For landscape architects, the interconnectedness of these systems is a baseline understanding. Many of the adaptive solutions at our fingertips—natural infrastructure, carbon sequestration, floodplain restoration, urban canopy expansion—are basic building blocks of our profession. The challenge now is not so much inventing new techniques as it is aligning the actors needed to implement them at scale, embedding a climate-conscious ethos into projects of all scales and contexts.

Through SWA’s Climate Action Plan, we’ve committed to a 50% reduction in emissions in our built portfolio by 2030, a goal we’ll continue to report on through our series, “The Low-Carbon Landscape.” A larger, more necessary shift is cultural as well as technical, moving from isolated best practices to collective action.

Read the latest story:
https://www.swagroup.com/stories/what-does-the-low-carbon-landscape-look-like/

In this weekend’s The New York Times, Sam Lubell writes about how museum security has become a design question, particul...
04/21/2026

In this weekend’s The New York Times, Sam Lubell writes about how museum security has become a design question, particularly after the high-profile jewelry heist of the Louvre last year.

Covering Architectural Resources Group and SWA’s work on Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum, the piece illustrates how perimeter design, planting, lighting, and structural upgrades can better secure institutions without hardening the visitor experience. For SWA, this work also entailed revisiting an historic landscape by Nancy Goslee Power modeled after the gardens at Giverny—carefully resurfaced, realigned, and replanted to improve circulation while enhancing overall structure.

🔗 Read the full piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/arts/design/museums-security.html

📷 Philip Cheung for The New York Times

04/16/2026

TWO WEEKS LEFT to register and earn up to 4.5 FREE CEUs for the richly edited videos of the dynamic presentations at Soak It Up. This recent daylong conference organized by TCLF focused on how landscape architects are at the forefront of addressing climate change-accelerated urban flooding and water management.

The conference videos will be available for THIS MONTH ONLY on PlayCore’s CORE Professional Development Hub and offer opportunities to receive IACET CEUs, AIA CEs, and LA CES credits. Register now at the link below and use code “PARTNER" to register.

https://www.tclf.org/watch-soak-it-los-angeles

📸 Soak it Up Conference, USC Bovard Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA - Photo by Nord Wennerstrom, 2025

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