Complementing the Inner Harbor’s world-famous promenade, Westshore Park has come to be known as the city’s living room on the harbor. The park is strategically located on the innermost shore of the harbor and sandwiched between the new Baltimore Visitor Center and the Maryland Science Center. Having rediscovered its maritime heritage and opened it to the world at the Inner Harbor, the city had failed to provide for the large open space that would define its new center. Beginning with an open space master plan of the entire Inner Harbor area, this strategically located site was selected for Baltimore’s new green civic venue on which to congregate, celebrate and present itself to the world with pride. Where once cars were parked on compacted lawn panels, these 2.5 acres of open lawn, gardens, fountains, and views now constitute the major civic space in the city’s revitalization and livability efforts.
The park is level with adjacent streets to maximize sight lines, resulting in a three-foot elevation above the waterfront promenade, providing a vantage point from which to watch life on the harbor or step into it. Tourists as well as residents are attracted to the exhibits, performances, and celebrations on the large level central lawn that has been designed for maximum flexibility. Weekly yoga can easily shift to a full concert the next evening and then back to an arts festival. Flanking the lawn is a shaded garden, a café area with food kiosks, and a café plaza by the Visitor Center. The main plaza is just a few steps up from the Harbor’s Promenade. Dancing, cooling jets shoot up from the ground in concert with colored lights, music, and a fog machine.
A large sculptural pavilion provides shade and shelter for performances, while the harbor edges provide dramatic overlooks, ramps, and seating steps that encourage activity between the promenade and the park. Shaded perimeter paths with benches and lush planting areas provide garden seating from which to view the main park activities and harbor beyond. Through careful programmatic analysis and attention to those details that bring comfort, West Shore Park has become both tourist grounds and Baltimore’s common ground.
Nelson Mandela Park Master Plan
Identified by the City as one of its “Big Five” open space projects, the conceptual master plan for Nelson Mandela Park will create a much-needed central open space for the city’s south district, an industrial area along the waterfront that is home to a growing and increasingly diverse population. Here the city seeks to transcend its current park paradigm of l...
Marinaside Crescent
SWA provided urban design and overall conceptual landscape architectural design for this mixed-use project including condominium buildings with shops, restaurants and storefronts at street level, a waterfront promenade, a marina, parks and inner building courtyards, and pedestrian-oriented pathways linking the Marinaside Crescent Road and surrounding streets. ...
San Jacinto Plaza
The redesign of San Jacinto Plaza, a historic gathering place in El Paso’s downtown business district provides a state-of-the-art urban open space, while protecting and celebrating the history and culture of the site. The project was the result of an intensive community process involving input from a wide range of constituents. Active programming, environmenta...
Silver Park
An entire 42nd Street block, in Manhattan’s west side, has been developed as a new residential tower complex whose central public park space is common ground to be shared by the neighborhood and new residents. A strong architectural edge at its 42nd Street sidewalk is created by fall portal light pylons and a trellis “room” from which visitors can view the str...