Naftzger Park offers a contemporary and communal gathering space in downtown Wichita with enough variety to appeal to everyone. Designed to activate an area of town between Old Town and a burgeoning new entertainment district, the park is at once an urban foyer and outdoor recreation room. A contemporary pavilion can accommodate picnic tables by day and performances by night. A permanent LED screen enables game day events, movie nights, or even an auxiliary screen for a stage event. A flexible lawn encourages active play as well as relaxed lounging. And a designated “bark park” offers a place for local dog owners to mingle. The park quietly contributes to the resilience of the city’s infrastructure with its stormwater cistern and, once the newly planted trees mature, will function as a future urban forest.
Perk Park
Originally completed in 1972, Perk Park is a vestige of IM Pei’s urban renewal plan. It was built in an era when the street was seen as a menace so parks turned inward. Rolling berms around the edges and sunken areas in the middle, filled with concrete retaining walls, reflected that era. Not surprisingly, the park fell into decline; abandoned by the neighborh...
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...
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...
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 ...