Santa Monica’s famous pier area draws visitors who often disregard pavement boundaries and compact the landscape soil. Palisades Park, adjacent to the iconic pier, is a particularly active site for cyclists and tourists that has long been in need of a planting strategy to discourage pedestrian overflow into the landscape. SWA’s defensive planting strategy tackles this perpetual headache for the City of Santa Monica. Three parcels of land are planted with agave, aloe, and other hardy, drought-tolerant species. The spikey shape of the plants discourages users from treading through the planting area, thereby alleviating the issue of compacting the soil. An existing ficus tree border frames the park, while fencing is strategically employed to keep users off of particularly sensitive areas.
Bensonhurst Park
Bensonhurst Park is part of the larger Shore Parkway, an 816.1-acre collection of parks that stretches across Brooklyn and Queens. Today, the site provides a series of pathways, passive seating areas, recreational fields and a playground.
SWA/Balsley created a master plan for the redesign of the north end of the park and final design and construction doc...
Jeffrey Open Space Park
The Jeffrey Open Space Park represents approximately 96 acres of park and trails, with an average width of 265 ft. The three-mile long spine is designed for passive uses with a network of trails that connect to residential neighborhoods and active recreation parks.
The design process included a series of community workshops to solicit community’s commen...
San Jacinto Plaza
SWA’s redesign of San Jacinto Plaza, a historic gathering place in El Paso’s downtown business district provides a state-of-the-art urban open space, while protecting and celebrating the history and culture of the site. The project was the result of an intensive community process involving input from a wide range of constituents. Active programming, environmen...
Ricardo Lara Park
Ricardo Lara Park is a vibrant city park and a case study in landscape infrastructure. It demonstrates how a small investment and creative thinking about landscape can transform the very infrastructure that has long divided and isolated a community into an amenity that unites it, offering much-needed environmental and recreational benefits.
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