The vision for Tianjin Eco-City is of a socially harmonious, environmentally friendly, and resource-efficient model for sustainable development. The new city encompasses two flagship civic projects: the National Maritime Museum and the surrounding South Bay Park. South Bay Park is the project’s central green infrastructure, but also provides a significant outdoor amenity for the National Maritime Museum. It provides green, healthy, vibrant environments for the local community’s daily use as well as establishing a regional tourism destination.
The National Maritime Museum is the centerpiece of the park. The concept for the museum takes its cue from the surrounding ocean, and represents a school of fish coursing through current. Its dynamic form and scale dominate the setting, and will be the focal point for visitors to the park. To connect the park with the museum as one cohesive, connected environment, a concept was adopted that borrows from the relationship between an organism and its environment, in which over time, an organism adapts in response to its surroundings. The park carries this relationship with the museum forward by expanding upon its reference to the sea and, through a common design language, creates a dialogue between architecture and the landscape.
Hunter's Point South Waterfront Park
Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park was envisioned as an international model of urban ecology and a world laboratory for innovative sustainable thinking. The project is a collaboration between Thomas Balsley Associates and WEISS/MANFREDI for the open space and park design with ARUP as the prime consultant and infrastructure designer.
What was once a ba...
Greening Houston’s Freeways
As Houston’s Downtown has developed and expanded over many decades, public green space has been increasingly constrained by several interstate routes: primarily I-59, -45, and -69. These thoroughfares, while essential for commuters, have left little room for workers and nearby residents to enjoy unimpeded access to their locale’s adjacent trailways and bayous,...
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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Ningbo East New Town Eco-Corridor
SWA provided planning and design services for the 3.3km long, 250-acre metropolitan Ningbo Eco-Corridor, which transforms a former agricultural plain that had been taken over by industrial use into urban green infrastructure. Located in the heart of the Yangtze River Delta on China’s coastline, Ningbo is one of China’s oldest cities, with an area of 3,616 squa...