The largest urban public park ever built, King Salman Park is a defining element of Saudi Vision 2030—an ambitious effort to transform Riyadh into a more livable, sustainable, and globally competitive city. Envisioned as the “Green Lung of Riyadh,” the 16.6-square-kilometer park spans seven times the size of London’s Hyde Park and five times that of New York’s Central Park. Occupying the former Riyadh Air Base, the park dramatically expands the city’s green space.
Designed by a team including SWA, Gerber, MVVA, Buro Happold, and Setec, King Salman Park integrates environmental restoration, innovative infrastructure, and diverse programming at an unprecedented scale. The park includes over 11 square kilometers of green space and more than seven square kilometers of pedestrian pathways, interwoven with cultural, artistic, leisure, and entertainment destinations. Centrally located within the city, the park connects to seven key roadways, while a pair of tunnels, each spanning over two kilometers, run below ground level.
Through an ambitious program of terraforming, soil enhancement, and microclimate creation, the park will be home to more than one million trees across a range of typologies, supported by forest research facilities and sustainable water systems. Native plantings, autonomous transit, naturalistic water features, and extensive public amenities come together to form a model of ecological urban regeneration. King Salman Park is an urban oasis designed to elevate Riyadh’s quality of life and affirm its position as a leading global city.
The project was recognized as the Future Project winner at the 2025 RIBA Middle East Awards, and the first phase is scheduled to open in 2026.
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...
Panyu Central Park
Panyu Central Park breaks the boundary of the traditional gated community and promotes sharing of open space among residents and visitors. This neighborhood development is the hub for a dense urban community, raising its visibility and value and setting a high standard for open space in the area. The park provides welcoming activity space for all ages with its...
Halperin Park
Halperin Park (previously known as Southern Gateway Park) caps Highway 35 in South Dallas directly adjacent to the Dallas Zoo and the Oak Cliff neighborhood. The park’s design effectively reconnects the neighborhood, which was cleaved by the highway’s construction many decades ago.
Recognizing the reunification’s significance, the cap park design introd...
Temple City Playgrounds
Ten miles east of Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, Temple City sought to upgrade its aging parks and existing playgrounds into safe and welcoming spaces for community members of all ages. SWA worked with the city to host a community engagement workshop focused on renovating two city playgrounds: Live Oak Park, the city’s largest park, span...