SWA

On Friday, Walmart unveiled its new headquarters in Northwest Arkansas, set on a 350-acre campus designed by SWA, with buildings created by Gensler and other firms. “Contemporary workplace design was forever changed by the pandemic—and in many ways, the Home Office anticipated these changes, centering community-oriented design, indoor-outdoor connectivity, flexibility, and social cross-pollination,” says Gerdo Aquino, FASLA, Co-CEO of SWA. Knitting together a 6.7-mile network of complete streets, shaded walkways, multimodal trails, and soft-surface paths, the campus design dissolves the boundaries between new facilities and surrounding landscapes, encouraging employees to explore the expansive grounds and a broader 40-mile network of regional trails. Inspired by regional landscapes, SWA’s design threads native Arkansan ecosystems through the campus over 115 acres of native and adapted plantings, 13 acres of constructed lakes and bioswales to manage stormwater, and over 5,000 trees. 🔗 Read more below—and follow coverage of the project in The Architect's Newspaper, Fast Company, Architectural Record, and more. https://lnkd.in/gxBkDStH

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"The Walmart campus contains some 750,000 native plants, including 5,000 planted trees ... the 'regenerative' landscape can repair itself and is made whole again through a reconnection with natural systems—water, wildlife and flora and fauna," writes Forbes of the new Walmart Home Office campus in Bentonville, Arkansas. Opened earlier this month, the campus has already been praised widely for its unified approach to architecture and landscape—a collaboration between SWA and Gensler—as well as its environmental performance and integration with the surrounding Bentonville community. Click through for recent coverage in Forbes, Architectural Record, The Architect's Newspaper, Fast Company, Dezeen, and more. https://lnkd.in/g4dH9kBT

Happy Year of the Snake from SWA. Ya You, an Associate Principal in our Shanghai studio, created an animation accompanied by a poem: 灵蛇戏碧草，春风启佳年 The nimble serpent frolics amidst the jade-green grass As the spring breeze ushers in an auspicious year.

"We've wanted some sort of centerpiece square gathering area for the community for at least 14–15 years," said Lisa Goldman, City Manager of Burlingame, California. Designed by SWA, the new town square broke ground last week just a 30-minute drive from downtown San Francisco. Transforming a surface parking lot into a multi-purpose space, the project will feature a grove, seating area, cascading water feature, and a stage and plaza able to accommodate a range of programs, from performances to farmer's markets. “I’m very excited about the project, not only that it started, but for what it’s going to be for the city — kind of a destination, a place for people to gather for community events, community gathering," said Burlingame Mayor Peter Stevenson. Read more in the San Mateo Daily Journal:

Last week, SWA Associate Shaun Loomis joined XL Construction on a tour of mass timber buildings along Sunnyvale's Green Link, organized for Cal Poly College of Architecture & Environmental Design students. The group discussed mass timber construction and delved into best practices for designing sustainable landscapes and habitat creation in Silicon Valley. Shaun spoke about SWA's work at 1265 Borregas, designed MGA | Michael Green Architecture, XL Construction, SERA Architects, Equilibrium Engineering Solutions, Sares Regis Group, and more. For the landscape, SWA used wooden site furnishings to establish a cohesive material language on the ground plain, complementing the building materials. The site features native coastal species like California live oak, sagebrush, and milkweed to enhance biodiversity and minimize water use. Learn more about the project here: https://lnkd.in/eVNmxxxP

At 28 stories tall, 1550 on the Green is named for the adjacent Discovery Green, a green oasis in Downtown Houston. Threading native landscapes through the BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group and Skanska-designed tower, SWA created a series of tiered roof terraces that each showcase unique themes including a woodland garden (12th floor), pollinator garden (20th), and an arid garden and pocket prairie (28th). A 48,000-gallon rainwater collection tank supports the building's irrigation and non-potable water supply, with plantings selected to minimize water use and maintenance. Achieving LEED Platinum, WELL, and Fitwel certification, 1550 on the Green has become one of Houston's best-performing buildings, highlighting the region's diverse ecology while offering panoramic city views.

We're checking in on the grading progress at Irvine's Heart of the Park. Last Fall, the city broke ground on the central component of the reimagined Great Park, one of the world's largest municipal parks at over 1,200 acres. Designed by SWA's Laguna Beach studio, the overall vision for Great Park is inspired by Irvine Ranch’s agricultural legacy and the site’s history as home to the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. The Heart of the Park anchors the project with a mosaic of civic features and restored regional ecosystems that give form to programmatic areas. A key transformation is the excavation of 22 acres of manmade lake fueled by Irvine’s greywater system, divided roughly into North and South Lakes. Given the project's vast size, construction will be phased and staggered over the years, with the Heart of the Park opening in 2027 and continuing through 2029.

In recent years, a new approach to corporate campuses is taking form in response to a changing workforce and climate—increasingly centering connection with nature, mobility, and flexibility in both the design and function of landscapes. For Fast Company, Nate Berg spoke with SWA's Co-CEO Gerdo Aquino, FASLA on how these ideas play out at Walmart's newly opened 350-acre campus in Bentonville, Arkansas, where the company was founded in 1962.

The Baumer Lecture Series begins THIS WEDNESDAY, January 15, at 5:30 p.m. in the Gui Auditorium with Anya Domlesky. “Public Works: Infrastructure Rescripted for Life” As our cities and environments become more complex and face unprecedented challenges, it is no longer sufficient to design for aesthetics alone. Climate change, emerging technologies, rapid urbanization and depopulation are major drivers accelerating change in our environments. Designers need to speed up, better equip, and be deft in changing course to begin to meet these challenges with meaningful impact. The practice of urban design, landscape architecture, and planning now demands going beyond typical design services to support deeper insights via foresight, research, experimentation, and innovative advocacy. At SWA, a dedicated practice-based research and innovation group has enabled a move away from a traditional service-based, reactive mode to a proactive stance. This talk describes the group, XL Lab, its way of working, its research methodologies, how it integrates research into design projects, and focuses on one practice-based research project on infrastructure adaptation. Anya Domlesky is an urban designer and landscape architect, currently the Director of Research at SWA. She founded and runs XL Lab, the firm’s innovation lab undertaking practice-based research on three drivers of change in the built environment: climate change, emerging technologies, and processes of urbanization. The lab explores near future conditions in the built environment, performs analyses of design performance, experiments with new technologies to create tools for the field, and does topical investigations that address emerging complexities and unprecedented challenges. Read more https://bit.ly/4gNxEo3