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 and a park at a prominent edge of Shanghai. The project’s scheme integrates historic buildings, and provides an appropriate separation of public and performance spaces from private living and educational spaces as well as a functional and ceremonial arrival and drop-off area. At the large central plaza, a dramatic interactive fountain welcomes visitors and creates a sense of drama for public performances. The feature may be shut off to create outdoor space for larger public gatherings. The plaza provides access to the Center’s four new buildings, each with its own distinctive outdoor courtyard. Courtyards are carved into the landscape, with the new spaces offering a variety of experiences for learning and performance. In this new amenity for the public, curving bands of paving, along with rows of trees, hedges and promenades sweep through the landscape, where seating and water features welcome visitors from the surrounding city.
Work attributed to SWA/Balsley principal John Wong and his team with SWA Group.
Intercontinental Hotel
Located in the center of the vibrant Times Square district, this new four-star hotel (one of only three in New York City) serves as the base for well-traveled tourists, businessmen and dignitaries from around the world. As a unique product of the hotel’s branding and place-making strategy, the client asked that the courtyard make a memorable first impression o...
Schuylkill Yards Highline Plaza
Highline Plaza at Schuylkill Yards will transform an underutilized surface parking lot into a vibrant landscape of connection that celebrates the distinctive infrastructure of the CSX highline and the adjacent railyards between two distinguished new skyscrapers designed by PAU Architecture and HDR. The half-acre plaza will be highly programmed, with active 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...
Residences at W New York Downtown
The Residences at W New York Downtown is located in lower Manhattan. The at-grade public plaza creates an urban space with a food kiosk surrounded by a large raised wood deck with table, chairs, and built-in custom stainless steel benches and bar seating along the perimeter. A series of interplaying IPE wood and pre-cast concrete benches creates seating and co...