Pioneer Information
Sasaki, Walker and Associates was founded in 1957 in Watertown, Massachusetts, by Hideo Sasaki and Peter Walker. This association was an outgrowth of a collaboration that began when Sasaki was chair of the Landscape Architecture program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. In 1959 Walker opened a regional office in San Francisco and developed the firm’s west coast practice. Significant projects of the 1960s include Foothill College, Fashion Island, and the Weyerhaeuser Headquarters. In the 1970s, the firm name changed to the SWA Group as the firm moved to larger scale master planning projects, including the Golden Gate National Recreational Area, and collaborated with architectural firms including I.M. Pei, Phillip Johnson, and Charles Moore. In 1983, Walker left the firm, and in 1988, Kalvin Platt became the CEO.
