Gerdo Aquino

Gerdo Aquino is the firm-wide Co-CEO of SWA, an award-winning global practice operating at the leading edge of landscape architecture, planning, and urban design. Comprised of eight studios domestically and internationally, SWA’s mission is to build community, nurture ecosystems, and reconnect people with nature and each other, driven by the belief that landscape is essential infrastructure. For over 25 years Aquino has worked collaboratively with communities, public agencies, institutions, and private developers in Los Angeles, and around the world, in shaping a public realm informed by natural ecosystems and guided by the current needs of our built environment. Recent work includes planning and design studies to transform Los Angeles’s Ballona Creek into a multi-benefit corridor; urban design and resiliency planning for a 4-kilometer section of the Sava River Waterfront in Belgrade, Serbia; the development of a 400-acre Connectivity Plan for the Port of Los Angeles, and a new 300-acre HQ campus for Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Aquino is a licensed landscape architect in eight states, holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the Harvard University GSD. He has taught graduate design studios at the University of Southern California and the Harvard University GSDand co-authored the research publication Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA (2nd edition).