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. 

University of Buffalo Solar Park

2010 - Buffalo, NY, USA

University of Buffalo Solar Park

Buffalo, NY, USA

CLIENT University of Buffalo / New York Power Authority (NYPA) / STATUS Competition Finalist, 2010 / SIZE 6 acres / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates, Inc.

Balmori Associates with their proposal of “Public Power Park“ was chosen as one of three finalists out of 20 artists invited to compete for the design of a new ‘Solar Park’ by the university of Buffalo with the New York Power Authority (NYPA). The installation was required to use 5,000 solar panels within a landscape to produce energy for the student housing and proposed one of the largest on any campus in the United States. Balmori’s proposal addresses the nature of technological infrastructure, where nature and technology intersect and proposes a new kind of public space, one that is a programmed response to producing power, and powering public space.

Modeled after the lake effect, Solar Effects captures weather to produce power and public space. The lake effect marries wind, humidity, temperature and topography creating a powerful weather machine that shapes our collective experience of landscape. This phenomenon drifts through the sky painting the land with rain and snow.  The solar grid is pixilated and reordered along the flows of wind and people. The drifting arrangement and varying heights of the panels form a solar topography, optimized for peak power production.  Solar education and demonstration are embedded in the project. Water collects in the gently undulating meadows.  Mirrors dot the underside of the panels, sparkling in the sun and moonlight, further increasing the solar efficiency of the system.  Snow cones register snow and ice in playful sculptures embedded into the structure of the system and an interactive Solar Iceberg glows with the latest solar technologies.

Kuala Lumpur City Center/PETRONAS TOWERS

1999 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur City Center/PETRONAS TOWERS

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

CLIENT Kuala Lumpur City / STATUS Completed 1999 / SIZE 97 acres / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates

The Kuala Lumpur Retail /Entertainment Complex and Atrium is part of the 97-acre Kuala Lumpur City Centre development, centrally located at the heart of the ‘Golden Triangle’ of the city.  Approximately half of the 97-acre site is devoted to public areas of park and garden, surrounded by 18 million square feet of commercial, retail, hotel, and recreational and residential development.

The central space, Petronas Plaza, is dedicated to a public garden, walled to protect it from encircling traffic. Formal lines of trees and fountains, organized around a series of linear elements aligning on the main axis of the Twin Towers, create an enclave for the public away from commercial development.

Interwoven geometric patterns animate the linear bands of paving inset with poetry; a variety of plant textures, colors and heights reinforce the space’s axial organization. The fountain elements are repeated at the base of the towers, linking the plaza’s two main areas. The fountains’ activities vary; the water, at times dripping, splashing or gushing, becomes a ballet of color and sound at night while providing during the day an active play environment for children and cool resting place in this hot climate.

United States Institute of Peace

2011 - Washington, DC, USA

United States Institute of Peace

Washington, DC, USA

CLIENT United States Institute of Peace / STATUS Completed 2011 / SIZE 114,300 SF / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates, Moshe Safdie and Associates

The Peace Institute’s landscape is designed as a garden; a garden that surrounds a circular foyer for groups to gather at the front of the Peace and Education Center. This foyer is contained, first of all, by semicircular benches which curve inwards around a long table with individual stools; contained beyond by “living walls” which separate the space from the two busy streets which intersect at its corner. The living walls are undulating walls of concrete which flow through the gardens and paths at various angles and heights. These inclined walls are draped with plants or contain pockets of planting. In several places they allow water to run down them and are lighted. These living walls serve several functions. They serve, first, as a line of security around the building’s perimeter. Second, they hide the constant movement of traffic around the two main streets by the site. Third, because they are planted they give the sense of a broader, thicker surface increasing the sensed distance from the traffic.

Flowering trees and perennials add their color and texture to the enclosure in white and purple. White as a symbol of peace and as a reassertion of the white color of the wing-like roof of Moshe Safdie’s building. Purple used with restraint sets up the white more dramatically. The plants have been also chosen for scent, so that visitors are enveloped in perfume, color, and water once they enter the precinct. Beyond the circular foyer, the public passes by the edge of the terrace which fronts the building, but which you can enter only from the inside. The edge of the terrace allows for a view at the exhibition space below. The terrace itself is an extension of the Great Hall within. At this point , the visitor has dramatic views of the atrium and its translucent hovering roof above. As the public ascends toward the entrance there are also long views toward the Institute’s gardens to the west.

University College Dublin

2007 - Dublin, Ireland

University College Dublin

Dublin, Ireland

CLIENT University College Dublin / STATUS Competition Finalist, 2007 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates / Zaha Hadid Architects 

In collaboration with Zaha Hadid, Balmori Associates submitted a master plan for the expansion of the University College in Dublin.  This design proposed hybridity as a strategy to create new building and landscape typologies.  Landscape and architecture merged to form continuous multi-layered public surfaces and green building facades.  The slopes that transitioned between the path and the buildings were exemplary of the thickening interface.  They were layered with plantings and materials and became usable and occupiable spaces that extend the landscape to a 5th facade of roof garden.  This interface also became a sustainable strategy that aimed to maximize campus biodiversity by extending existing green space and branching out to form a new campus green network. 

Meditation Room: Horizon

2015 - New York, NY, USA

MEDITATION ROOM: HORIZON

New York, NY, USA

CLIENT  The Drawing Center New Museum Biennial IDEAS CITY 2015 / SIZE 110 ft2 / 10 m2 / STATUS Completed 2015 / DESIGN TEAM Balmori Associates

The Meditation Room project emerged from the exploration of the ideas of horizon and peripheral vision.

Meditation Room: Horizon was installed in Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side of New York City, for one day -- Saturday, May 30, 2015.  Presented by The Drawing Center during the New Museum’s Ideas City Festival, the installation created the sense of an expansive horizon in the smallest of spaces.

Balmori Associates’ “Meditation Room: Horizon” is a constructed continuous wall of paper where the overlapping of two dot matrix systems comes together to create a visible horizon. A city is distinguished by the presence of multiple horizon lines stacked one over another. A task of landscape in the city then may be to create the sense of an expansive horizon in the smallest of spaces. You are invited to meditate on this concept of the horizon and to draw your interpretation.

 

Temporary Landscapes

Temporary Landscapes

All landscapes are temporary; everything around us is. Some landscapes are temporary by design: the viewing fence around Ground Zero, which will be removed when the construction planned for the site is completed, for example; or the temporary landscape built on a derelict site in Brooklyn, until the site is used for another, more permanent, project.

We see great value in temporary landscapes for cities. They can serve to try things out, change the character of the place, fast: the Garden That Climbs the Stairs in Bilbao was designed and built in three months. Temporary projects are also often low-budget interventions allowing for ideas to be tested. Realizing Robert Smithson Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan Island showed us the potential for the floating typology to occupy and negotiate shifting landscapes such as a river.