Portsmouth Square is the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown: the main civic park for all community festivals and events as well as an important day-to-day outdoor living room for the community. Centered in the densest community in the United States west of the Hudson River, the park plays a critical role in the health and well-being of the local residents, over 40 percent of whom live in single-occupancy units.
Since being established as Yerba Buena’s first public space in 1833, Portsmouth Square has undergone many iterations, culminating with the building of an underground parking garage with an RHAA-designed park on top in the 1970s. SWA led a year-long, community-participatory planning process to envision this park for the next generation structured around five large public workshops, working with approximately 20 community groups and 30 key stakeholders, and coordination with six city agencies. The design takes into account stormwater design, solar power, high albedo surfaces, urban forestry, all over an existing structure.
Palisades Park
Santa Monica’s famous pier area draws visitors who often disregard pavement boundaries and compact the landscape soil. Palisades Park, adjacent to the iconic pier, is a particularly active site for cyclists and tourists that has long been in need of a planting strategy to discourage pedestrian overflow into the landscape. SWA’s defensive planting strategy tack...
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 doc...
Hennepin Avenue
Hennepin Avenue is the oldest street in Downtown Minneapolis, and has gone through multiple transformations over time. The street is undergoing a major reconstruction, and SWA is leading the effort to enhance the character of Hennepin for years to come. The conceptual approach was developed through a robust public engagement process, and touches on the three m...
NOAH Ethnographic Village
Armenia has set an initiative to increase global tourism and develop a site within its capital city with majestic views of Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark is purported to have landed. SWA developed a strategic plan based on several principles derived from the existing context of the site: first, to capitalize its proximity to important landmarks that allow for ...