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.
325 5th Avenue Plaza
A new residential tower has risen across the street from the Empire State Building. As a zoning incentive, a new public plaza was included to attract and accommodate the area’s tourists as well as its diverse office and residential neighborhood. The space is defined by a clean, contemporary design composition of spaces, elements and custom furniture meant to f...
La Plaza Cultura Village
Located within El Pueblo, the birthplace of Los Angeles, La Plaza Cultura Village is a mixed-use, transit-oriented development totaling 425,000 square feet of retail, apartments (20 percent of which are low income units), cultural facilities, and public open space. Two large, surface parking lots have been transformed into a vibrant community that builds upon ...
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...
Avenida Houston
SWA and the architect’s narrative of nature and industry united underscores the design of the new 140,000-square-foot (3-1/2 acre) Avenida Houston plaza, adjacent to the freshly renovated George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston. Key to the theme of nature as it plays out in this new events space is the famous central flyway that offers hundreds o...