Perched on the edge of San Francisco Bay, the Hunters Point Shipyard was an important naval manufacturing center for the WWI and WWII war efforts. The abandoned shipyard and Candlestick Point were combined into a new, mixed-use residential, retail and light industry development—the largest in San Francisco since WWII. Thomas Balsley Associates collaborated with urban planners IBI Group in developing an innovative urban plan whose parks and open spaces exploit the site’s extraordinarily diverse waterfront and views as well as its rich maritime heritage. The plan combines the proposed Forty-Niners football stadium within the new mixed-use community with a sustainable system of smart streets, bikeways and diverse parks, including California’s first urban state park, redesigned to function as the front lawn to San Francisco’s Bayview and Hunters Point Community. A lively network of neighborhood parks, plazas, linear boulevard parks, roof deck recreation areas, and a continuous waterfront park trail and bikeway system knits the spaces together and connects the upland community to its new shipyard neighbors and the extraordinary bay environment. The state park’s grassland and natural shoreline has been retooled into a landscape of the highest standards of environmental and social sustainability.
One Uptown
Bringing a singular landscape design expression to a site featuring two buildings designed by different architects, the SWA/Balsley team worked to seamlessly integrate a variety of outdoor spaces to accommodate the mixed-use One Uptown. At the ground level, tree-lined streetscapes and bike lanes lead visitors to a coworking and dining courtyard along Burnet Ro...
Gubei Gold Street
SWA was selected to conceptualize, design, and realize a rare find in bustling Shanghai—a pedestrian mall (Gold Street). The corridor occupies three city blocks, is flanked by 20-story high-rise residential towers with retail at street level and book-ended by SWA-designed parks. Creating an iconic presence and enlivening the area, the mall features plazas, fou...
Guangzhou Vanke Center
Guangzhou Vanke Center incorporates commercial, and office uses in an urban setting. To echo the “cascading” concept of the architectural design, the landscape architecture was inspired by the fluidity of water, as well as the unique local cultural heritage of dragon boats. The design provides for different types of social activity with variously scaled spaces...
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
This office building’s roof garden celebrates a potent image of the native Texas landscape: the level, grass-covered plains emerging from a wooded riparian area. A design vocabulary of native, drought-tolerant plant materials, especially selected to react to light and air movement, reinforces this design approach. The project serves as a two-acre rooftop garde...