Envisioned as a garden oasis strategically situated where city meets desert, Dubai Hills will be a vibrant yet elegant mixed-use community for 21st-century living. The key public realm element of this massive 1,000-hectare development is a 5.6-kilometer urban boulevard lined with shops, residences, and offices along the district’s central spine. SWA/Balsley designed the southern half of the boulevard, three gateways, and seven open spaces, ranging from intimate pedestrian passages to bustling plazas to lush, green neighborhood parks. The landscape character is simple, clean, and bold, with a particular emphasis on subtle and refined paving details, monocultural style planting featuring culturally significant native trees, and accent features in the form of sculptural landforms, follies, shade and shelter elements, and public art.
Buffalo Bend Park
Buffalo Bend Park is a conversion of waterfront industrial land into an urban wetlands demonstration project. The project diverts urban runoff into a series of connected wetlands before returning the flow to the bayou, removing bacteria, nutrients, and toxic materials from the flow on the way. The plan includes parking, trails (including a segment of the regio...
Hermann Park
Hermann Park is one of Houston’s great civic resources containing a significant urban forest and many public venues. It is the flagship of the Houston Park system, serving the recreation needs of the City’s diverse population of some four million and welcoming over six million visitors a year. However, like many urban parks in America, much of Hermann Park has...
Evelyn’s Park
In honor of their late matriarch Evelyn, the Rubenstein family donated a historically and geographically prominent five-acre tract on the busy Bellaire Boulevard and created a conservancy to fund a public park with primarily private funds, while engaging the public in its design and development. This park seeks to be reflective and adaptive to the local cultur...
Lynwood Mega-Playground
The City of Lynwood is renowned for its aerospace research and manufacturing industry. As a predominantly Latino, blue-collar, and park-poor city, Lynwood deserves a park and playground rooted in its own culture and history, with a variety of programs and play opportunities.
With these great aspirations, the Lynwood Mega Playground project site was sele...