From its mountainside perch overlooking Seoul, the Samsung Museum of Art Complex boasts museums by three of the world’s most sought-after architects: Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel and Mario Botta. Uniting these remarkable yet divergent works of architecture is a space of clean and powerful gestures. This elegant, understated landscape serves as their matrix and must perform multiple duties: make a welcoming first impression; connect with local transportation to orchestrate the visitor’s journey to and through the complex; and function as a stage for viewing the architectural ensemble and the sculptures.
Complementing rather than competing with its muscular surroundings, the landscape is designed to provide the visitor with a rich visual palette. She might rest on the long seat occupying the central platform; pause to admire the views from a series of terraced platforms leading down the slope, or enjoy the native plantings of azaleas, pine trees, densely-planted birch trees offsetting Nouvel’s dramatic gabion walls, and bamboo culms which serve as a backdrop for a fleetingly glorious mass of bulbs, all in muted shades of blue-gray. A directional paving pattern, identity graphics, and LED art installations help guide movement through the site. This dynamic, architectural landscape takes full advantage of its extraordinary setting, mediating between the fixed structures of the buildings and artworks and the sensory surprises of the urban garden in constant flux.
Tarrant County College
To meet the growing needs of the downtown and North Main communities in Fort Worth, Texas, SWA provided the master plan and landscape design for a new college campus to add to the Tarrant County College District. Designed to be constructed in a series of phases, the project aims to provide a stimulating and rewarding environment for students and the local comm...
San Jacinto Plaza
The redesign of San Jacinto Plaza, a historic gathering place in El Paso’s downtown business district provides a state-of-the-art urban open space, while protecting and celebrating the history and culture of the site. The project was the result of an intensive community process involving input from a wide range of constituents. Active programming, environmenta...
Riverside Park South
On the West Side of Manhattan, on the scenic Hudson River shoreline, Riverside Park South is a massive, multi-phase project of sweeping ambition and historic scope. Combining new greenspace, new infrastructure, and the renovation of landmark industrial buildings, the plan—originally devised by Thomas Balsley Associates in 1991—is an extension of Frederick Law ...
New Jersey Institute of Technology Green
This campus, like many others, has suffered from the lack of a coherent plan, rendering its campus experience to a series of passages through disconnected interstitial spaces. A key component of the landscape master plan was the identification of new building sites on campus that would shed light on a comprehensive assessment of open spaces and movement system...