Weill Lawn and Commons provide outdoor performance venues at Green Music Center, a world-class performing arts complex. The landscape architects prepared overall master planning and landscape architectural design. A simple, dramatic grading plan unifies project elements, directs circulation, and buffers concert venues from adjacent roadway traffic. Weill Lawn is the first acoustically protected outdoor venue on the West Coast for symphony orchestra and other highly polished musical performances. The lawn complements architect William Rawn’s design for the 1,600-seat Joan and Sanford I. Weill Concert Hall, which opened in September 2012 and is generally considered one of the world’s most acoustically superb concert venues. When the pavilion’s back wall is opened, Weill Lawn expands its interior capacity with a series of lawn terraces that accommodate up to 5,000 visitors in chairs or 1,600 seated at tables. Weill Commons provides a larger, informal amphitheater for 10,000 along with an open-air pavilion for major gatherings.
Work attributed to SWA/Balsley principal John Wong and his team with SWA Group.
Sheikh Khalifa Medical Center
Sheikh Khalifa Medical City is a massive new medical complex located in the Center City of the coastal city Abu Dhabi. The mega-project consists of four major hospitals and numerous outbuildings sited on a sprawling 90-acre medical campus. As the future flagship for the Emirates national medical system design excellence, cultural sensitivity, and advanced sust...
SUNY Albany Uptown Campus
With great respect for Edward Durrell Stone’s 1960s modernist campus, this new master plan redefines the campus’ first impression image and reclaims quads as new venues for an enhanced campus lifestyle. The entry drive encounters a new Collin’s Circle, now raised to the level of the entrance plaza. The earthen plinth engages the plaza entry at the new Ad...
Medgar Evers College Campus Quad
Since its founding in the 1960s, Medgar Evers College has been a central figure and source of pride for Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant community. Its reinvigoration, spurred by a rapidly expanding student body, began ten years ago with a campus master plan, prepared by Ennead Architects and Thomas Balsley Associates. In addition to new facilities, the plan fore...
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Campus
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Campus Fuchu, Japan. Landscape International, Ltd. Kume Sekkei, Architects. NBBJ Architecture. SWA provided master planning and landscape architecture for the Foreign Studies Campus of Tokyo University on the site of a former military base on the outskirts of Tokyo. This campus serves Japanese and foreign students pursuing a...