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, skyline views and the river. The Promontory is a great lawn with a natural shoreline edge that takes advantage of the Manhattan skyline; in North Gantry Plaza, the skyline is framed by restored gantries—gigantic structures that once transferred railcars onto rail barges; framed by tree-shaded cafes, a fog fountain and game tables, the plaza accommodates 30,000 viewers for the 4th of July fireworks; South Gantry Interpretive Garden is a contemplative space formed by two paths; here, stepping-stone blocks provide the visitor with direct access to the water and look as if they had been abandoned only yesterday. Peninsula Park offers a great lawn promontory with a natural shoreline edge. It is enhanced with willow trees and natural grasses and encourages a wide variety of passive activities. This extraordinary site was blessed with a diverse shoreline and an intact light industrial/blue collar residential neighborhood whose diversity inspired its design. This place helps to heal a once-divided community and instill in it a strong sense of neighborhood spirit and pride. The Friends of Gantry Plaza State Park alliance, formed to protect the park, testifies to the power of this place.
Freedom Park Master Plan
Despite Freedom Park’s rich history as a site of protest in late 20th-century Atlanta, proximity to vibrant destinations, and vast, bucolic open space, the site has suffered from indistinct identity, unclear boundaries, unsafe pedestrian crossings, low biodiversity, limited placemaking, and minimal programming. SWA’s master plan ushers a new era in ...
Guiyang Hot Springs
Guiyang Hot Springs, located in Guiyang City, China, brings together the rhythm of the Nanming River, and surrounding trails and trees to create a new urban ‘living room’ in the interstitial space created by new development and roadway infrastructure. Nestled into a mountainous site, the master planning addressed elevation changes of up to 100 meters and the e...
The Clearing: Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial
This project was designed to honor the 20 children and six educators who were slain on Dec 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Designers Dan Affleck and Ben Waldo created a competition-winning design for a memorial space which is both open-ended and unifying in how it is experienced, honoring the full spectrum of emotions this tragedy evokes. They wanted...
Dubai Expo 2020
From October 2021 to April 2022, the City of Dubai will host the World Expo: a large-scale International Registered Exhibition that will bring nations together with universal themes and immersive experiences. It will comprise an entire new city, built on a 1,083-acre site between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The Expo site is organized around a central plaza linked to ...