Wuhan Garden Expo

2015 - Wuhan, China

Making Horizon 地平線 - 水平線

Wuhan, China 

Creative Garden Design Scheme for the 10th China (Hubei) International Garden Expo

The horizon line is one crucial reference when experiencing landscape.  It is the apparent line that separates earth and sky.  An ocean introduces a powerful horizontal allowing the eye to extend far over its flat surface and wide along the horizon, producing a particularly pleasurable experience which becomes an inseparable part of the landscape experience. Sometime the “true horizon” is obstructed by objects such as trees, buildings, mountains – this would be called the “visible horizon”. In cities with multiple, stacked, and constricted horizons, the search for the sense of an open horizon gets partly satisfied in the opening a park provides. Perhaps then, real pleasure from being in a park depends not only on the presence of vegetation, but on the release from the city’s constriction of the horizon line. One of the tasks of landscape may then be to create the sense of a wide horizon.

Since 2006 Balmori Associates, Landscape and Urban Design has been divided in two parts.  The first is a landscape practice that investigates landscape as a constructed space. The second part, BAL/LAB, is a collection of research and experiments. One BAL/LAB deals with the challenges of representing landscape. Diana Balmori wrote in Drawing and Reinventing Landscape (Wiley, 2014) that “Landscape architecture is an art of peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is essential for understanding and appreciating landscape; central vision alone cannot capture it.” To explore this, vision scientist Denis Pelli and Balmori Associates’ staff set up an experiment to measure how restricting the observer’s field of view affects the observer’s experience of the beauty of a landscape. The viewing devices chosen for this demonstration are a tube and truncated cone (with both ends cut off).  The results show that restricting the observer peripheral vision reduced the viewing pleasure.

In 2011 for a Garden Festival in Metis, Canada, Balmori Associates implemented the viewing cone described above as a series of planes with a circular opening, the void gradually rising from the ground. When progressing through the frames towards the St Lawrence River, focusing on the floating islands, the field of view opens, the horizon gets wider and infinite space offers itself to the viewer.

The Meditation Room BAL/LAB launched in 2014 emerges from the exploration of the ideas of horizon and peripheral vision. The research aims at creating the sense of an expansive horizon in the smallest of spaces. In May 2015 Balmori Associates built an installation presented by The Drawing Center during the New Museum’s Ideas City Festival in New York City. “Meditation Room: Horizon” is formed by a continuous wall of paper where the overlapping of two dot matrix systems come together to create a visible horizon. Visitors were invited inside to meditate for ten minutes. The design of Making Horizon地平線 - 水平線 for the 10th China (Wuhan) International Garden Expo is the result of our research and investigation of landscape representation and peripheral vision.

The project name 地平線 - 水平線 was inspired by two very distinctive spatial environments created in the garden.  The first being the constricted and constantly shifting horizon of the bamboo forest, with the very bold horizon line painted across the bamboo canes.  This we would refer to as 地平線 a general term to describe the boundary between earth and sky.

Once in the interior space, you are greeted by an illusion of an open and infinite horizon, created with the use of curved mirrored walls that reflect the sky, and the pool of water on the ground. This we would refer to as 水平線, a term used to describe the more specific horizon line made by the meeting of sky and water.

Making Horizons (地平線 - 水平線) creates a powerful twofold experience that challenges the perception of space.

 The visitor is initially drawn into the garden by following a spiraling path of blue pebbles, these pebbles have glow-in-the-dark properties. During the day the pebbles absorb sunlight, and in the evening light is given off by them. This soft blue light illuminates the path, creating a mysterious glowing path which guides the visitor through the bamboo forest.

In this space, the visible horizon line - where the earth’s surface and the sky appear to meet - shifts to a constructed horizon line, defined by the meeting point of two colors, blue and yellow, which is painted on the vertical bamboo stalks. Yellow at the top and blue at the base. This line creates a very distinctive and powerful visual horizon, which is in contrast to the verticality of the bamboo itself. The forest of bamboo creates an intense and constricted space, and chops up sightlines creating a maze-like experience.

As visitors follow the blue pebble path they circle towards the center of the garden, the bamboo forest progressively intensifies as the stalks become closer together and as the pebble path narrows. The sense of compression becomes magnified towards the center of the garden revealing a previously invisible space. A continuous circular mirrored room reflects and extends outside the dense vertical space of the surrounding bamboo. But from the inside it shifts to an open horizontal plane, with continuous mirrors on each side and a thin and still layer of water on the ground. The water reflects the sky above, extending the open space to infinity; it is a space of meditation at the core of the garden.

The visitor will be able to enter this room and walk out into the center; a narrow gravel path of gravel submerged just under the skin of the water will give the illusion of walking on water whilst creating a continuous water plane.  The illusion of the endless reflection of water introduces a powerful horizontal allowing the eye to extend far over its flat surface, producing a pleasurable landscape experience.

Where the surrounding bamboo forest creates a constricted   environment, the center creates an ephemeral one, where the visual clarity of the horizon line will stand in contrast to the changing mood of the sky. 

King Abdullah House of Culture & Arts

2009 - Amman, Jordan

King Abdullah House of Culture & Arts

Amman, Jordan

CLIENT Darat King Abdullah II / SIZE 12,000 m2 / STATUS Competition Wnner 2009 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates / Zaha Hadid Architects

Located in the heart of the Jordanian capital of Amman, this new venue for the performing arts was an initiative of King Abdullah II to create a place to house all performing arts. Conceived as a complex to become the mayor venue for theater, music, and dance performance in Amman and Jordan, Balmori Associates teamed up with Zaha Hadid Architects to create a vital element of cultural life in the area, and a catalyst of education.

The Performing Arts Centre, the fifth element of the Cultural district, will house a music hall, concert hall, opera house, drama theatre, and an academy of performimg arts designed to foster local and international talent. Designed by British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, the center will be 62 meters high. Zaha Hadid described the design of the Performing Arts Centre as “a sculptural form that emerges from a linear intersection of pedestrian paths within the cultural district, gradually developing into a growing organism that sprouts a network of successive branches. As it winds through the site, the architecture increases in complexity, building up height and depth and achieving multiple summits in the bodies housing the performance spaces, which spring from the structure like fruits on a vine and face westward, toward the water.”

 

Kent Falls Trail

2006 - Kent, CT, USA

Kent Falls Trail

Kent, CT, USA

CLIENT CT Dept of Environmental Protection, CT Dept. of Public Works  / SIZE 1/4 mile trail / STATUS Completed 2006 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates, Vollmer Associates LLP

A green corridor badly eroded through overuse, poor design, and incompetent earlier construction, is not only restored but re-conceptualized through differing levels of intervention. Views along the quarter mile long route are enhanced and smaller spaces for respite and contemplation are created along the way.

The scheme creates new nodes that serve as optional trail branches at times, special lookouts at others, fulfilling functions that the original trail never had. It also proposes a loop rather than a climb and descent through the same trail, as a way of thinking through the ongoing reconstruction process and responding to the need to deflect the public's attention from areas under construction. 

A very short bridge proposed by a sculptor is to cross the stream above the last waterfall, presenting the opportunity of an artistic intervention and adding interest to the trail path. Excessive traffic is reduced by a return trail on the opposite side of the stream. This bridge is to be financed by the local community. Special attention was given to the construction details and materiality of benches, signage, guardrails, stairs, and walls in order to preserve the park's rural character. Lookouts and small intimate spaces were specifically designed to address the site and frame key views. Atypical and sometimes unexpected moments along the trail were given similar attention to detail in order to heighten the scenic experience

Shenzhen Cultural Park

2003 - Shenzhen, China

Shenzen Cultural Park

Shenzhen, China

CLIENT Shenzhen Municipal Planning & LandInformation Center / STATUS Competition Finalist 2003 / SIZE 136.38 acres / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates, MAD Architects Office

Shenzhen Cultural Park reflects an understanding of the forces at work in modern cities and no longer interprets the park as an isolated and passive precinct of the city. It features the park as an active shaper of the city; a conveyor of pedestrians, bikers and skaters; a fluid connector of green system with arms that extend to unite as many living pockets in the city as possible, enhancing the sustainability of all. It is conceived as an active set of strands weaving through the city and enlarging at times into modes of intensified activity and overlapping cultural functions.

Another idea governing the design of this park is that its forms derive from the intersection of landscape and architecture. The landscape is treated as a continuous surface which sculpts the land three-dimensionally according to the city’s particular dynamic and results in layers crossing and weaving; surfaces changing into volumes. Forms result from the intersection of landscape with the roads, buildings, and programs at work in this new city. This intersection of landscape with architecture gives rise to a new entity we call Parkitecture.

June Callwood Park

2009 - Toronto, Canada

June Callwood Park

Toronto, Canada

CLIENT City of Toronto Toronto Parks, Forestry & Recreation / SIZE 0.4 hectare / STATUS Competition, Finalist 2009 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates / DTAH

Balmori Associates and DTAH’s competition entry for June Callwood Park on the historic edge of Lake Ontario creates intimate neighborhood pockets along a main path that opens up to Fort York, Coronation Park and the lake. Sculptural forms generated by sun and wind patterns in the park define spaces for recreation and respite allowing for new ways of urban inhabitation and programmatic facility. Slides meander down the slopes and children play in the mist of rubber balloons in an interactive splash park. Rubber surfaces allow for unstructured play and the Fort York Green provides passive play space adjacent to the playground.

The park is shaped to maximize the sun exposure with maximum wind protection. The concave surfaces facilitate stormwater management in an artful manner (once collected in underground cisterns, water can then be used to irrigate the park) and at night they glow with the moonlight.

13 Acres // East Clayton Public Park & School

2000 - East Clayton, Canada

13 Acres // East Clayton Public Park & School

East Clayton, Canada

CLIENT East Clayton / STATUS Competition 2000 / SIZE 13 acres / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates

The 13 acre site is surrounded by a New Urbanist style, Sustainable Community Master Plan developed between 1997-2000. Based on principles of sustainability and complete communities, the plan includes the application of innovative servicing, stormwater management, road standard, and neighborhood planning ideas.

The Livable Region Strategic Plan, the Greater Vancouver Regional District’s vision of land use and transportation sets out four broad strategies for achieving urban growth in the Lower Mainland region.  These include protecting the green zone, building complete communities, achieving a compact metropolitan region, and increasing transportation choice. The Clayton area was identified as a “suburban”, and East Clayton as a new “urban” neighborhood.

At the same time, complete communities also protect the quality and integrity of ecosystems by maintaining environmentally sensitive areas (i.e., natural flow-receiving watercourses), and by managing the quantity and quality of storm-water runoff.

Rosario Civic Center

2001 - Rosario, Argentina

Rosario Civic Center

Rosario, Argentina

CLIENT Municipalidad de Rosario / STATUS Constructed 2001 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates, Pelli Clarke Pelli

South Garden        

Option A: a space defined by an hedge of flowering shrubs and grass in the center with a largetree as focal point. A water element (a small cast iron fountain ) and benches around the space will be included to animate it. The possibility of using this space for the wedding ceremonies or for the reception after the wedding was accepted and Arq. Vidal encouraged usto continue exploring it.

Option B: a central space planted with flowering trees in an elliptical shape, surrounded by grass and shrubs. In this case the benches are under the gallery.

Civic Plaza

Conceived as a hard plaza with a paving pattern that emphasizes the axis and the inclusion of benches and a water element if the possibility of closing the plaza by night exists. We discussed the issue of the security by night and although we believed that the Café and the Health Center would generate activity, Arq. Vidal advised us to consider the inclusion of a gate. He also commented about the need to contemplate some outdoor furniture for the bar. We also talked about the importance of the “ totem’s” location in the Plaza as the symbolic element ofthe Civic Center.

North Garden

A space for basketball practice and a space for sitting under a large tree with stepping stones and a drinking fountain. The surrounding walls will be treated with a kind of brick (nido de abeja) which allows the light to go through. Vines are proposed on the top. Arq. Vidal suggested to treat the space as an outdoor waiting room for the Health Center instead of a playfield.

Streetscape                           

Option A: large trees spaced 9 to 10 m in between them.

Option B: For the streets with parking places we proposed large trees combined with small trees in between them. For the other two streets, we proposedlarge trees spaced 10 m in between them . The species used are Jacaranda and Tipa. The access of public to the Civic Center would be primarily by bus, secondarily place by walk and bike and in the latter by car. Arq. Vidal express the need of provide bike racks (aprox. 20 units). He also suggested including a drop off for the Registro Civil. Anotherissue that was considered is the possibility of proposing a roof garden in some of the buildings as an improvement in the mechanical systems of heating and cooling.

Maral Explanada

2015 - Mar del Plata, Argentina

Maral Explanada

Mar del Plata, Argentina

CLIENT Maral SIZE 264,000 ft2 / 25,000 m2 / STATUS Completed 2015 DESIGN TEAM
Balmori Associates / Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects

Located by the sea in Argentina’s largest beach resort city, Maral Explanada consists of a sloped landscaped terrain connecting three residential towers. The site sits above the rocky Atlantic shoreline at Playa Chica, one of Mar del Plata’s well-known beaches.

The three towers — 19, 21 and 23 stories tall — are arranged around a series of terrace gardens planted with indigenous plants. At the base of the tallest tower is a stepped, stone-clad podium with an accessible rooftop garden. Inside this podium is a large gym and indoor pool shared by the three towers.

From the base of the towers, the land drops steeply to the sea. The landscape design mediates this 10-meter incline with a series of terraces that recreate the natural coastline. The terraces include spaces for walking and leisure, as well as an outdoor swimming pool. Native Argentine salt resistant species of various textures delineate the property’s boundaries separating private from public.

Institute for Advanced Studies

1996 - Princeton, NJ

Institute for Advanced Studies

Princeton, NJ

CLIENT Institute for Advanced Study / SIZE 15,000 Sq ft. / STATUS Completed 1996 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates, Inc. / Van Zelm, Spiegel & Zamecnik, Inc. / Geotech; Melick-Tully & Associates , Inc. 

A spare quadrangle enclosed by cherry trees sits at the campus’ eastern edge; a vista towards the woods stretches out on one side of a vast open lawn. A traditional slate blackboard, a surface from within the buildings, is now a built outdoor element, to be written on and erased by the mathematicians passing through the courtyard.

Several feet away, two copper-clad slabs sit perpendicular to each other, forming a corner. Water streams continually down their surfaces and leaves a lasting mark visible in the winter when the water is turned off. These minimal components, with changing markings, are a modern reworking of the traditional elements of fountain and wall.

The courtyard is organized to provide access to the two buildings while maintaining an expansive central area where outdoor recitals may be held or individuals can sit under the cherry trees that define the edges of the courtyard.

Hudson Yards Park

2008 - New York, NY, USA

Hudson Yards Park

New York, NY, USA

CLIENT NYC DDC / LOCATION Hudson Yards, NY / STATUS Competition Finalist 2008 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates, Work AC, Langan Engineering, L. Robertson Associates, Fritz Haeg, Projects Projects, Creative Time

Hudson Yards linear park runs parallel to the Hudson River Park connecting the major transportation and cultural hubs of 34th and 42nd streets. Low Line Park is a linear park with a new context and form. It is a park of movement that creates an urban leisure infrastructure and includes diverse programming. 

Low Line Park in the Wild West Side responds to the architecture, infrastructure, topography and ecology to create what we term SuperCityPark(s). The park and streetscapes weave through each block, taking on specific character and creates a program accordingly. The park builds off the energy of the city- and by its nature the park retains and develops its traditional ecological functions: habitat creation, stormwater management, species diversity. This pattern of development and its mixed use will serve as a model for Low Line Park as a new kind of linear park, one with a programmed response to its surrounding development.  

Hua Qiang Bei Road

2011 - Shenzhen, China

Hua Qiang Bei Road

Shenzhen, China

CLIENT Bureau City Government of Shenzhen /  STATUS Commissioned 2011, Under Development / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates / Work AC / ARUP / Zhubo Engineering / Zhubo

In 2010 Balmori Associates and Work AC won an invited competition to redesign a 1 kilometer section of Hua Qiang Bei Road in Shenzhen. The design responds to the area’s growing commercial character by improving flows, organizing traffic and enhancing the pedestrian environment with a green streetscape.

To strengthen the identity of Hua Qiang Bei Road we created a series of nodes of activity that project a vibrant new vision for the district’s future. These nodes take on different scales. The most visible are the five “lanterns” that define a new space of the street, in the sky, providing connections and enabling a major expansion of public space. We imagine the “lanterns” to resonate with the famous entrance gates to traditional Chinese streets, creating a strong and memorable image. The lanterns are like the needles of acupuncture: used at only a few, precise points to bring energy and organize the flows around them, letting the street breathe better between. They are also bridges, connecting one side of the street to the other. We also provided a wide variety of shade trees and seating types, our designed fountains and paving will improve both air flow and pedestrian flow.

This is a new kind of urban design approach, we call it urban acupuncture: acting precisely and strategically to get through all the channels to create the maximum impact using minimal means. We use a systematic and synthetical Urban design method to combines the softness of landscape design, the precision of traffic engineering, and the power of architecture to improve flows, strengthen identity, and create new public space.

 

Housatonic Fields Brass Trail

2006 - Monroe, CT, USA

Housatonic Fields Brass Trail

Monroe, CT, USA

SIZE 1 mile site/5 mile loop  / STATUS Commissioned Study, 2006 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates

Balmori Associates’ Master Plan for a waterfront park and recreational trail in a quaint, New England town weaves the language of the abandoned railroad spine into the new heart of the town: a waterfront park, a recreational trail, and a new recreational facility for the public and local school systems.  Currently the town framework includes an under-utilized waterfront park, an intact town green with local retail, a historic railroad station structure on the site, and a former industrial building available for conversion to new use.  The town has the resources, and Balmori Associates’ proposal envisions a new future with a park as a catalyst for economic growth and a model to direct future development in a positive direction.

Harrisburg U.S. Courthouse

2017 - Harrisburg, PA, USA

Harrisburg U.S. Courthouse

Harrisburg, PA, USA

CLIENT United States Courthouse / STATUS Under Design 2017 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates /EnneadArchitects LLP

The landscape for the United States Courthouse in Harrisburg can be seen as a vessel for judicial functions, and also as a cultural eventscape that reinvigorates part of the city. The project creates a bold new highly articulated topographic surface that acts as a device mediating between building and site and site and surrounding urban environment. The landscape for the Federal Courthouse helps to synthesize and merge these environments. It aspires to create a new civic vision for the future of Harrisburg while recalling many of the regional and historical aspects of the city: the topography of the Blue Mountain escarpment, geological maps of the region, and the sinuous forms of the adjacent rail yard. The landscape of the courthouse, like the city itself, is borne out of an array of ideas that begin to overlap and intertwine forming a composite that contains traces of the past while providing a new civic future for Harrisburg.

Ground Zero Viewing Wall

2003 - New York, NY, USA

Ground Zero Viewing Wall

New York, NY, USA

CLIENT LMDC / STATUS Completed 2003 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates, Pelli Clarke Pelli 

Temporary memorials arose as a way for both city residents and visitors to respond immediately to the events of September 11th --areas for grieving sprang up on fences, traffic islands in downtown Manhattan and fire stations throughout the city. While the pairing of the terms ‘temporary’ and ‘memorial’ is seemingly contradictory, this juxtaposition adds a certain resolution that exists for a fixed period in time. Balmori Associate’s viewing wall for Ground Zero looks to those spontaneous, short-lived responses as a way to capture a specific moment of our grief.

Ground Zero’s perimeter enclosure was imminent, as the Port Authority announced plans for a 40-foot long fence around the site; as a response, Balmori Associates generated ideas for the enclosure, presenting them in model form at a meeting of the American Society of Landscape Architects at the Max Protetch gallery.

The proposal was sent to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) and the Port Authority developed an alternate plan based on Balmori Associates’ design.  New York New Visions, a committee of design professionals concerned with the rebuilding effort, further revised the proposal during a weekend charrette. The Port Authority then produced construction documents, modifying our suggestions but keeping our original idea of transparency and setbacks.  The final viewing wall was 13 feet high with 5-foot setbacks where visitors were able to leave mementos to be collected on a regular basis.

The structure is also a sort of construction fence-a regular feature at every construction site in the city since John D. Rockefeller put one specifically designed for viewing the construction of Rockefeller Center in the 1930s- an acknowledgement of the public’s legitimate inclusion in urban development. 

The name of the structure changed from “construction fence” to “perimeter enclosure” and then to “viewing wall” to reflect an awareness of its public role.

Cliff Walk Mar del Plata

Mar del Plata, Argentina

Cliff Walk Mar del Plata

Mar del Plata, Argentina

DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates

Pathways, ramps and stairs make for a new interface between the city and the water. They weave into a dramatic steeped space expanding at times over the water or creating tidal pools. Nodes of public space rhythm the cliff walk.

Godrej Campus Master Plan & Corporate Headquarters

2015 - Mumbai, India

Godrej Campus Master Plan & Corporate Headquarters

Mumbai, India

CLIENT Godrej Properties / STATUS Completed 2015 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates / Pelli Clarke Pelli /Atelier 10

A large park will form the heart of this mixed-use development, with unique and colorful pocket parks integrated into the spaces between the architecture. Rooted in Godrej’s commitment to ecology and sustainability, the overall landscape concept is designed to manage the site’s water; complementing the building programs and activities. Water, both abundant and scarce, is a valuable resource in the Mumbai landscape. Various measures collect storm water during the summer and use it when rainfall is limited. All buildings, infrastructure and landscape will be built with the unique ecological condition of Mumbai in mind.

 Godrej Headquarters is the first piece of the master plan development. The celebration of water is the central idea for the landscape spaces which weave throughout the building. Integrated water systems move through the project’s tree swales and green roofs that collect, clean and recycle the water. This water is then used for irrigating the plantings and replenishing the Water Gardens. The landscape enters the project through interior lobbies and atriums. Native water gardens frame the headquarters. Bamboo fills the atrium with veil like planting to the skylights. Terrace gardens define the façade and create lushly planted spaces within the building. All plantings are native and adaptive species that require less water. The planting design was qualified as part of the LEED Platinum certification of this project.

Universidad Siglo 21 Campus Master Plan

2005 - Cordoba, Argentina

Universidad Siglo 21 Campus Master Plan

Cordoba, Argentina

CLIENT Universidad Siglo 21 / STATUS Constructed 2005 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates

The new campus for Universidad Siglo 21 offers a modern interpretation of the traditional university campus, assuring a pedestrian environment through a linked community of open spaces that enhance and enliven the special and day to day activities of the University.

The campus consists of two main axes – east-west and north-south – expressing two different characters that complement each other. The east-west axis is an urban environment, named “El Paseo Peatonal”, and it is the main circulation spine on which the primary campus buildings are located. The north-south is a green axis, comprised of a main quadrangle, “La Plaza Mayor”, and a grand esplanade, “El Prado”, leading to a picturesque lake at the south of the campus. In addition to “El Prado”, there are two other types of green spaces: courtyards and plazas, named “Plazoletas”.

The campus buildings and open spaces are sited according to basic environmental principles. The main axis that ties together “La Plaza Mayor”, the cascading spaces of “El Prado”, and the new picturesque lake is oriented northe-south to accommodate the natural slope of the landscape and primary views towards the city center of Córdoba. The cross-axis of the pedestrian street is organized along the slope’s contours from east to west to provide ample daylight to the intimate scale of “ El Paseo Peatonal” for the major portion of the day. As well the pedestrian street links the campus entrances to the east and west, and its development is weighted in the direction of the community center to the West for optimal interaction between the community amenities and the life of the campus.

The plant palette, the paving materials, the furniture and the lighting have been carefully chosen and designed for unifying spaces and complementing the materials used in the buildings, harmonizing with the overall campus design. 

Yongdusan Complex Master Plan

2008 - Busan, Korea

Yongdusan Complex Master Plan

Busan, Korea

STATUS Competition Winner, 2008 / SIZE 439,171 m2 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates / iArc / Kerl Yoo

D-City is a 21st Century model of ecological design; responding to new ways of living and offering exciting new perspectives of landscape and the urban context. Within an existing city park area, a new public park and separate commercial area have been built on mutual synergies. Architecture and program is woven through the landscape by subtle shifts of the surface.  The organic shapes morph into the towers.

The towers are a reflection of the natural elevations of the mountains and emerge from the ground as eco-towers and rise as a new landmark for Busan. The existing public square is restored and accommodates a variety of programs. 

 

Yaktusk Museum of the Mammoth

2007 - Yaktusk, Russia

Yaktusk Museum of the Mammoth

Yaktusk, Russia

CLIENT Yaktusk / STATUS Competition Winner 2007 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates, Leeser Architecture

The Museum of the Mammoth sits on a vast, flat site on the edge of Yakutsk in eastern Siberia. The view across the site is brilliantly interrupted by the rise of a hill, the Tchoutchour Mouran. This natural folding of the land is where a new Museum hovers. Taking cues from the upturned ground, a box- the most simple, compact, and efficient of containers- rises in emulation of the angle of the hill.

The site design itself takes cues from the regional landscape. Based on patterned ground formations that occur above permafrost, the landscape design is both aesthetically and ecologically reminiscent of the natural patterns found near Yakutsk. The difference lies in the soils; the Museum site is likely artificially filled and may not behave as natural soils do. The imposed pattern is therefore adaptable to change over time.

West Village Townhouse

2003 - New York, NY, USA

West Village Townhouse

New York, NY, USA

STATUS Completed 2003 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates 

The idea for this west village townhouse was to create layers of landscape on multiple surfaces, both horizontal and vertical.  The architecture steps down in the back to allow maximum levels of sunlight into the house, allowing for terraced gardens at each level.  The top garden is a private garden off of the master bathroom, which floats in a field of grasses.  The middle terrace is an entertainment garden with a screen of bamboo and a wood platform event space.  Spilling from the kitchen, the first level terrace has a grand ‘moss painting’ of granite and moss, and is stitched together by an indoor/outdoor koi pond for all seasons.  The facade is wrapped in planting, using a screen of plantings to create a bold play of the interface between architecture and landscape.