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.
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...
Chelsea Waterside Park
In 1986, Thomas Balsley Associates was asked by the Chelsea Waterside Park Association to translate this community’s vision for a waterfront park into a design document that would be used to plan the new Route 9-A and the proposed Hudson River Park. Ten years later, when funding for the Chelsea Waterside Park was identified, Thomas Balsley Associates won an in...
Heritage Field at Macombs Dam Park
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 Ya...
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...