A key component in the downtown revitalization strategy, Main Street Garden Park required razing two city blocks of buildings and garages to make way for its transformation into a vibrant public space teeming with civic life. This two-acre park fosters downtown residential and commercial growth and was designed to accommodate the needs of residents in adjacent high-rise residential buildings, university students and faculty, office workers, and Main Street shoppers. Extensive public outreach and a carefully designed program for this diverse constituency has ensured the park’s success and sustained public embrace. The design acknowledges adjacent architecturally significant buildings such as the Beaux Arts City Hall and Mercantile Bank Building yet strikes a dramatic 21st-century design profile at this key location in Dallas’s emerging new urban core. The park includes an open lawn and performance space, around which key park elements are arrayed, seating areas, tot lot, central plaza, a unique “urban stream” with marble seat slabs, a “striated” garden, an urban dog run, illuminated green glass study-room shelters, and lush plantings. A green roof civic canopy hovers over the park pavilion and its raised cafe terrace. An artful light installation animates the garden room shelters and enhances the Main Street edge throughout the evening. This variety of spaces, ranging from large open lawn and café terraces to fountain plazas and garden rooms, will host neighborhood and civic events that, together with daily use, bring life and vitality to downtown Dallas.
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...
SIPG Harbor City Parks
This new riverfront development is located on the Yangtze River in the Baoshan District of Shanghai. This area boasts some of the highest shipping activity in the world. However, in recent years this single-function industrial zone has given way, allowing for waterfront parks to develop. Within this historically layered water front the Baoshan Park and Open Sp...
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...
Eucalyptus Society Garden
SWA’s design for this park, with its collegiate social atmosphere, offers a memorable place of natural respite that functions as green infrastructure.
Eucalyptus Society Garden project is located at the intersection of three science and innovation corridor axes in Guangzhou International Innovation City, including the core axis of the University City. B...