Shanghai EXPO’s Urban Best Practice Area surrounds the Plein Air Museum Park, which chronicles the unique and rich history of the site through objects of art, artifacts, and architecture. The landscape component of the museum park is expressed physically in the form of a Central Park: a gathering space and activity center for the community. The landscape was approached as a series of “fragments”: objects such as fountains, landforms, and sculptures as well as more defined spaces. In the Chengdu area, an entire garden was created, while elsewhere courtyards, bosques, and art installations predominate. Together, they form the central park and connect the Creative Innovation Center into one campus that is connected to the City, the surrounding community, and the river. SWA won an international competition for the project and provided full landscape architectural services.
Perk Park
Originally completed in 1972, this vestige of IM Pei’s urban renewal plan was built when the street was seen as a menace and parks turned inward. Rolling berms surrounded the edges and the sunken middle areas were filled with concrete retaining walls. After years of decline, Thomas Balsley Associates’ designed a plan to reunite the community with its park. The...
Gantry Plaza State Park
Once a working waterfront teeming with barges, tugboats, and rail cars, the Hunter’s Point shoreline slowly succumbed to the realities of the Post-Industrial Age and this spectacular site was left to deteriorate. Thomas Balsley Associates, together with Weintraub di Domenico, envisioned Gantry Plaza State Park as a place that celebrates its past, future, skyli...
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...
Tunica River Park
In 1990 the Mississippi Legislature legalized gaming as a job and tax creation strategy. Tunica, located at the northern border of the state near Memphis, Tennessee, was the first county to adopt gaming as an economic development strategy and implemented a program of rapid growth. The first casino was completed in 1992 and eight more were opened during the nex...