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.
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...
Hunter's Point South Waterfront Park
Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park was envisioned as an international model of urban ecology and a world laboratory for innovative sustainable thinking. The project is a collaboration between Thomas Balsley Associates and WEISS/MANFREDI for the open space and park design with ARUP as the prime consultant and infrastructure designer.
What was once a ba...
One Zero Park
Digital City is blessed with many assets that make it a special place in the Samsung family of campuses. Brilliant minds from around the world, an innovative environment, and an open space system in which the quality of work life is enhanced with play and relaxation. One Zero Park will be its center of spiritual gravity in which Samsung can host events and cel...
33 Beekman
33 Beekman Street Plaza is a public plaza that also serves as the front entrance to a new 30-story Pace University Dormitory, located in the financial district. The contemporary plaza appearance synchronizes with the contemporary plaza of Frank Gehry’s high-rise residential tower across Beekman Street to South.