Urban designer’s culture blends art and business
by Ron Leuty
original story at San Francisco Business Times
SWA Group isn’t just riding the green wave; it’s designing it — shrubs and all — from Beijing to Golden Gate Park.
Kevin Shanley - CEO
Yet as the employee-owned landscape architecture and urban design firm has expanded internationally, it is watching the growth’s impact on an open culture that has been key to SWA’s success. The firm this summer named Kevin Shanley of the Houston office as chief executive — the first CEO in SWA’s 51 years who is not based in Sausalito or San Francisco — and it has opened three new offices in the past five years.
“We had a concept from the beginning of minimizing hierarchy,” said Bill Callaway, a 40-year veteran of the firm who moved from the CEO post to chairman this summer. “If you get around 40 (people in an office), you need middle management. Then it’s half art, half business. It’s not a studio after that.”
When deciding who to add as a principal, for example, the current principals don’t put the matter to the vote; instead, they come to a consensus. And the San Francisco branch, for one, downplays walled-off offices, preferring open space in which the five principals work alongside associates.
In all, SWA has 30 principals among its 190 employees — twice as many principals as most firms.
“The next generation’s bought into it,” Callaway said.
That is, in part, tied to the firm’s employee stock ownership program, one of the first on the West Coast when it started in 1974. Also, said René Bihan, managing principal of the San Francisco office, it’s because young additions to the firm are paired with veterans. That’s helped keep turnover in the range of 15 percent to 20 percent, compared with an industry average of 23 percent. Along the way, SWA has turned in solid, award-winning work.
The firm handled master planning for the huge Shenzhen Bay project in China, which restored native vegetation to a trampled ecosystem while mixing in transit and pedestrian access; it oversaw landscape architecture and urban design for Beijing Finance Street, an 18-block redevelopment in the heart of the financial district of China’s capital; and it’s worked on local projects like Foundry Square and the “green roof” atop the new California Academy of Sciences.
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California Academy of Sciences - The Osher Living Roof
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The California Academy of Sciences’ green roof.
California Academy of Sciences
click on image to enlarge
SWA is working on active projects in more than 25 countries, and the firm opened an office in Shanghai, China, in 2003. It’s a good time to be in the green business. Developers — swallowing the “green is good” mantra — generally believe that the greening of their projects makes it easier to win leases. But that’s not always the case.
“There’s sustainability, but there’s also real estate values,” Bihan said. “It’s all about figuring out the best use of the land.”
SWA booked $32 million in revenue for the year ended June 30, double its revenue for fiscal 2004. It is the second-largest landscape architecture firm in the United States, in addition to land planning and landscape-based urban design. About two-thirds of that growth has come from overseas projects, primarily China and the Middle East.
As the firm picks up more work overseas, technology has helped bridge the geographies, said principal Corazon Unana, who started at the firm 18 years ago. At the same time, that puts designers on call 24 hours a day. For example, she said, a client in India may need someone for what is a morning conference call there but nighttime in the Bay Area.
At home, the growth creates more openings for new talent and to promote others to principal slots.
As the Sausalito office — the firm’s administrative base as well as a studio — hit the critical 40-person limit, for example, it spun off offices in Los Angeles three years ago and San Francisco five years ago. That allowed associates to move up the ranks in Sausalito, Bihan said, as other principals opened the new offices.
“You mold what you can be in this firm,” Unana said.
About SWA Group
Business: Landscape architecture and urban design.
HQ: Sausalito.
Founders: Hideo Sasaki and Peter Walker.
2008 revenue: $32 million (July-June fiscal year).
Revenue growth over last four years: Doubled from June 2004 to June 2008.
Year founded: 1957 (as Sasaki, Walker and Associates in Watertown, Mass.), with Walker opening a regional office in the Bay Area in 1959.
Number of employees: 190.
Web site: swagroup.com .
Sampling of projects: Beijing Finance Street with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP; master planning of Shenzhen Bay ecosystem restoration; master land plan for Disney World; water features for the City Creek Center project in Salt Lake City; landscape architecture for 14-block Santana Row in San Jose; California Academy of Sciences’ “green roof” in Golden Gate Park.
Smartest move: Minimizing hierarchy, highlighted with the company’s establishment, in 1974, of an employee stock ownership plan.
Key challenge: Globalization of the firm.
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