Downtown St. Louis is currently undergoing an urban renaissance: seeking to enrich experience of place and to attract a growing population of urban residents, employeers, and tourists. SWA/Balsley was engaged for district-wide landscape services for a new urban redevelopment, Ball Park Village, located directly across the street from Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.
Defining a new district identity for Ball Park Village has required striking a careful balance between program-driven design requirements and contemporary approaches to flexible public space design, all within the context of deep history and baseball lore. This downtown revitalization effort includes creating an iconic, unified district identity; strengthening pedestrian connections to the downtown core; and transforming the Field of Dreams (the historic location of the original Cardinals ballpark infield) into a vibrant, flexible public space that can accommodate a rich daily social experience as well as large events. The landscape master plan infuses the district with a hierarchy of public spaces, distinctive furnishings, signature paving patterns, public art, and performance lighting.
Nanjing International Youth Cultural Centre
SWA was retained to design the landscape of this mixed-use development collaboratively with Zaha Hadid Architects. It contains performing arts, hotel, residential, office and retail functions. Located adjacent to SWA’s Nanjing Youth Olympic Park, the design strives to merge architecture, the park landscape, and people at this iconic focal point. Landform...
2018 Winter Olympic Nordic Events Venues
SWA’s master plan for the three Nordic Events venues—the Ski Jumping, Cross Country Skiing, and Biathlon stadia and courses—honors the natural beauty of a spectacular Olympic Winter Games landscape as never before. The venues were originally slated to be located in separate valleys, requiring athletes and spectators to travel between sites. But in PyeongChang,...
Haikou Wuyuanhe Cultural and Sports Park
Haikou Wuyuanhe Cultural and Sports Park is a new landmark in Haikou, the coastal capital of Hainan. At its center, the Wuyuanhe Stadium, designed by gmp architects in the form of a crescent, anchors the park as the island’s first large-scale sports venue, with over 41,000 seats and a design that maximizes views of the South China Sea, natural shading, and ven...
Hokkaido Ballpark Master Plan
This project includes a new ballpark for Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, the surrounding landscape, and surrounding future development parcels, in Hokkaido, Japan. Inspired by the stadium’s architecture, which responded to a building type original to Hokkaido, the design incorporates indigenous landscape features, including a 100-year forest and a ravine, while ...