Sean O'Malley

Biography: Sean O’Malley is Managing Principal of SWA Group’s Laguna Beach Studio and a licensed landscape architect and urban designer with over 30 years of experience in community planning, urban design, landscape design, and construction. Sean combines his experience in environmental and large-scale urban design to formulate comprehensive land-based solutions that respect and respond to the environment they inhabit. His planning approach emphasizes the importance of environmental infrastructure as a basis for city-building, blurring the boundary between architecture and landscape. Since joining the SWA Group in 1988, he has been involved in a variety of design and large scale planning projects throughout the United States as well as Mexico, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, Australia, Croatia, Russia and France. Sean’s passion for the kinds of cities we build developed at an early age. The many challenges facing his hometown, San Bernardino, became a personal focus of his studies from high school through college. Seeing connections between air pollution, water, transportation, and urban form influenced his decision to study landscape architecture at the School of Environmental Design at Cal Poly, Pomona, where he received his bachelor degree with honors in 1986. His interest in the design of the city grew through his many months of solo travel through Europe, and expanded when he joined the SWA Group in 1988. Planning soon became a focus of his work, assisting in the development of many of the Irvine Company’s planned communities, form Newport Coast to Shady Canyon, Quail Hill, Woodbury, and Stonegate. He also assisted in the design of new towns in Northern and Southern California. Mr. O’Malley’s passion for California native plants led to his use of natives as a major framework for the 2,000 acre Shady Canyon Community and a major Irvine public park. Sean returned to graduate school for a degree in Urban Design at Harvard University, where he graduated cum laude in 1997 and received the highest class award in urban design for his innovative approach to landscape infrastructure and city form. He returned to SWA Laguna Beach where he continued to lead design and has won major international design competitions for 75 square kilometer new cities in Shunde and Changsha, China; and a 30 square kilometer urban redevelopment in downtown Shenzhen. He also led the stadium concept design for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in South Korea, and was the lead designer for the 2010 Asian Games master plan in Guangzhou, China. Inspired by nature’s ability to adapt, Sean continues to search for innovative solutions to address the many challenges facing our growing urban environments.