The Macombs Dam park ensemble consists of a variety of lush, contemporary green spaces in which the community can relax, socialize, and play. One segment of the landscape is a 13 acre park on the roof of the stadium parking structure, the largest full-service rooftop park every built by the City; another segment is an at-grade park where the now demolished Yankee Stadium used to stand. The rooftop park consists of an eight lane running track named after Olympian coach Joe Yancey, as well as a combination football/soccer field, 500-600 seat grandstand, comfort station, handball courts, basketball courts, adult fitness center, grassy knolls and a sledding slope. Heritage Field is perhaps the most highly anticipated piece of this South Bronx miracle: softball, little league and a regulation public baseball field where neighborhoods kids can play in the footprints of Babe Ruth. The Stantec/Thomas Balsley Associates team has composed heavily planted landforms and bioswales which define the edges of the sports fields and give the appearance of a place carved into the woodland. This extraordinary park has transformed a concrete behemoth into a verdant multipurpose greensward honoring its Yankee heritage.
Shanghai International Dance Center
Inspired by the idea of movement, this collaboration with Studios Architecture achieves an artful harmony of building with landscape, program with site. The image of a dancer in grand jete kindled the designers’ imaginations and served as the project’s organizing idea. Asia’s first professional dance complex is tucked between a freeway, a subway station...
Balsley Park
Located on Manhattan’s West Side, Balsley Park, formerly known as Sheffield Plaza, has been transformed from a barren, lifeless plaza into the community’s most cherished common ground.
Following public outcry and many failed attempts to redesign the plaza, Thomas Balsley Associates was hired to build community consensus around a new park-like image and ...
Burj Khalifa
Playing on the theme of “A Tower in a Park,” this shaded landscape creates a compelling oasis of green, with distinct areas to serve the tower’s hotel, residential, spa and corporate office areas. The visitor begins at the main arrival court at the base of the tower, where the “prow” of the building intersects a grand circular court—a “water room” defined by f...
Bensonhurst Park
Bensonhurst Park is part of the larger Shore Parkway, an 816.1-acre collection of parks that stretches across Brooklyn and Queens. Today, the site provides a series of pathways, passive seating areas, recreational fields and a playground.
SWA/Balsley created a master plan for the redesign of the north end of the park and final design and construction do...