Houston Is So Hot Right Now spotlights a take on heat in Houston's downtown core in the wake of one of the hottest summers on record, a derecho storm and Hurricane Beryl. The vision for alleviating "bad" heat and amplifying "good" heat in Downtown was developed based on input from the City and Downtown stakeholders and supported by the student intern program in the Houston office of SWA over the summer of 2024. This vision boldly weaves together open space improvements, climate adaptation strategies, and social infrastructure.
About the Artist
About the Exhibitor
SWA Group is a global collective of landscape architects, planners, and urban designers working to build community, nurture ecosystems, and connect people with nature.
Nationally, we’ve been leading the design industry forward for decades, in Houston, for over 40 years.
Today, we’re drawing that legacy into the future, innovating on projects of all scales.
Landscape Architecture
We see landscape as essential infrastructure.
Our studios work across scales, geographies, and contexts—from large, multifunctional spaces to small, intimate sites. Research into materials, lifestyles, and landscape technologies informs all of our work, coupled with a deep understanding of how people use outdoor spaces.
Planning
We see planning as a framework for long-term transformation.
Our approach to planning sets the stage for civic life, balancing short-term benefits with the long view. We help clients nurture the growth of entire urban districts, campuses, workplaces, transit-oriented developments, waterfronts, and more—creating places that flourish, adapt, and strengthen the communities that use them.
Urban Design
We see cities as laboratories of the future.
Urban design is about systems thinking. In cities across the globe, our designers have navigated the most complex conditions imaginable to deliver visionary projects embedded with unique cultural and environmental identities—from high-density housing to reimagined ports, restored river corridors to multimodal districts, reinvigorated cultural landscapes to high-traffic recreational hubs.
