The deep forest is nature’s supreme garden, sacred ground filled with the sights and sounds of life. Our native forests have been the sites of a 200-year-old clearing party whose hangover is still being felt. Very few of us have witnessed these sites to sense the magnitude of their destruction or their rebirth as represented by masses of seedlings, in a struggle against all odds, reaching for the sun. Here in one snapshot, the garden visitor’s senses and emotions are juxtaposed and invited to participate in a provocative dialogue between loss and hope, along a continuum.
National Ecological Center
The threat of global warming prompted the government of Korea to develop the country’s first national center of ecological research. After selecting a site, the government conducted an international design competition, in which the team of Samoo Architects and Thomas Balsley Associates won first prize. This 189-acre park will combine public and private researc...
Magok Waterfront Park
As one of the six mega-project sites known as the Han River Renaissance Plan, the city of Seoul Korea is transforming the 300-acre Magok site of ex-urban sprawl and marginally productive agricultural land into a new major metropolitan park thematically focusing on history and nature. With over 300 entries worldwide Thomas Balsley Associates, in collaboration w...
Paveletskaya Plaza
Situated along Moscow’s Ring Road and adjacent to the legendary Paveletsky Station transportation hub, the park at Paveletskaya Plaza will both cover and reveal the new bustling underground retail facility below while also serving as a landmark destination for residents and visitors alike.
The extraordinary retail and architectural vision for Paveletska...
NY Times
Thomas Balsley was selected by the New York Times as the only landscape architect in a cast of world-renowned architects to participate in the NY Times Capsule Design Competition. Mr. Balsley’s submission was selected as a finalist, exhibited, and published in the NY Times Magazine’s final series on the Millennium.