SWA

This weekend, SWA/Balsley Principal Steven T. Lee led a tour of Hunter's Point South Park as part of a celebration of NYC's 520 miles of waterfront. Since its completion in 2018, the park—designed by SWA/Balsley and WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism with Arup—has been widely recognized as a model for flood resilience and community-oriented planning, earning an Urban Land Institute Americas Award of Excellence in 2025. Learn more about NYC 520 and upcoming tours at the link below ⬇️

"The once-empty space over 14 lanes of interstate highway traffic coursing through the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas is now an exceptional new development open to the public: Halperin Park," writes Nate Berg for Fast Company. Spanning I-35E adjacent to the Dallas Zoo, Halperin Park reconnects two sides of Oak Cliff, a Dallas neighborhood divided by freeway construction in the 1950s. Its opening comes as cities across the U.S. continue to confront the legacy of the midcentury highway boom, with cap parks emerging as one way to reclaim land and restore neighborhood connections. “While it’s a park to reconnect communities, it’s also a park that we wanted the communities to feel like they helped design; they helped influence the programming,” said Todd Strawn, Managing Principal for SWA’s Dallas studio. https://lnkd.in/eXnhP4wC

A new cap park in Dallas by HKS, Inc. and SWA reconnects the neighborhood of Oak Cliff, after the community was divided by Interstate-35E in the 1950s. Halperin Park realizes a new structural deck with space for gatherings, keeping cool, lounging, and play. https://ow.ly/y19m50YWh49

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, Inc., 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://lnkd.in/eJMinaun — Project leads: Halperin Park City of Dallas Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) Design team: HKS, Inc. (Prime, Architect & Structural Engineer) SWA (Landscape Architect) Westwood Professional Services (Civil Engineer) K Strategies Group (Engagement) C-Suite Equity Consulting (Equity) WSP (Original Structural Design & Planning; Fire Life Safety) Purdy-McGuire, Inc. (MEP) MEPCE (Low Voltage & IT) Lang Lighting Design Inc (Lighting) OTL (Fountain Design) Construction team: McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. EJ Smith Construction Photography: David Lloyd & Bill Tatham, SWA (1–8, 10–11) Kathy Tran, Halperin Park (9)

The first week of June, landscape architects from across the U.S. descend on Detroit for the Landscape Architecture Foundation'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 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 execution, 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://lnkd.in/epjP5KQM

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 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)-designed The St. Regis Belgrade. 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 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://lnkd.in/eAgcnvBh

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://lnkd.in/ea4YY753 📷 Philip Cheung for The New York Times

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://lnkd.in/eRiyA6D7 📸 Soak it Up Conference, USC Bovard Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA - Photo by Nord Wennerstrom, 2025