Portfolio Balmori

BALMORI ASSOCIATES

FARMINGTON CANALYALE UNIVERSITY

The Farmington Canal, a 2-mile-long section of railroad in eastern Con-necticut, has been abandoned since 1982. A canal that ran three miles through the city of New Haven and six miles through Hamden, a New Haven suburb, preceded the railroad.The masterplan for the Farmington canal reuse was initiated as part of the federal Rails-to-Trails rehabilitation program. Developed by Balmori Asso-ciates it seeks, through substantial research, to reactivate the canal and transform it into a recreational corridor that will connect disparate parts of the city with center city.By modest moves, the canal corridor could affect projects that occur along it, becoming a spine on which to hang other built development. By 2003, this landscape spine would become a new recreational linkage in the city.

The Engineering Research Building of Yale University is located at the corner of Prospect Street and Trumbull Street. Working together with the design architects, civil and environmental engineers, Balmori Associates has explored numerous sustainable design ideas, including the use of porous paving. The porous paving is used as part of a larger storm water management strategy used in order to reduce the runoff volume and velocity.

The section of the abandoned railway is envisioned not simply as a trail but a new prototype of public open space, a linear park made up of dis-crete green segments that respond individually to their respective urban or suburban contexts, and reconnect back to the city and its suburbs.Open to the public and to the users of the building the trail would give the opportunity of enjoying a walk or bike ride along the redesigned canal.

Yale UniversityOffice of Facilities2 Whitney AvenueNew Haven, CT

CLIENT

Masterplan completed 1995Engineering School Section 2006

STATUS

SIZE 2.1 miles

MasterplanNo budget

COST

REFERENCE Nancy AldermanFarmington Canal Rails to Trails1191 Ridge Road North Have, CT 06473203-248-6582

BALMORI ASSOCIATESLANDSCAPE & URBAN DESIGN833 WASHINGTON STREET 2FLNEW YORK , NY 10014212 431 9191WWW.BALMORI.COM

684 BROADWAY MANHATTAN, NY

Matthew A Blesso, Blesso Properties

CLIENT

COMPLETED December 2007

STATUS

SIZE 3,100sf + 2,200 sf roof garden

WithheldCOST

PROJECT TEAM

Landscape Designer: Balmori Associates

Architect: Joel Sanders Architect

Associate Architect: Andrea Steele AIA and Andrew Deibel, ANDar-chitects

Consulting Landscape Architect: R2P Studio Landscape Architecture

The project at 684 Broadway is an effort to explore the interface of the built and natural environment. Reconfiguring the space in between and making new connections creates more fluid passages; not blurring the line between landscape and architecture, but widening it. This thick interface creates the opportunity for new types of spaces. Alternating sheaves of landscape and building on both horizontal and vertical planes create transitions within this widened line. It is a complex interface that is layered – the thicker the line the better – and results in a new spatial entity.

This interface becomes a sustainable strategy that aims to maximize biodi-versity and sustainable design in this urban site by extending green space both horizontally and vertically within the renovated apartment and exterior roof space. The result, hypernature, is an artificial spectacle of constructed nature. Natural forms and phenomena are revealed and re-visioned into a magical landscape for living. Ecology and art meet at the surface creating an explosion of life within the urban context.

The interface begins with an interior garden beneath a twenty foot long sky-light. Filled with large leaved Elephant Ears and black bamboo, the plants cre-ate an ascending green carpet beneath the floating stairs to the roof. Above the delicate bamboo fronds, through a glass partition separating the garden from master bathroom, is visible a green wall planted with euonymus. This improbable swath of vertical vegetation climbs the wall colliding with a second skylight through which is visible the rooftop planting.

Suspended above the sea of grasses is a bi-level ipe deck. On the lower level a small gravel path leads to a look out pod with views over the lower east side, an outdoor shower and on the opposite side of the stair bulkhead, a more pri-vate enclave with jacuzzi and sunning deck. Five steps lead to the upper level with an outdoor kitchen and grill lounging space. Opposite the parapet, the bulkhead rises into the sky. Densely planted with stepable plants one can lie on the slope and watch cloud rushing overhead. A staircase leads to the top from which there is a 360 degree view of the Lower East side.


The abandoned port of Puerto Madero is the site of Repsol-YSF’s 1 acre roof garden and winter garden. The site is also adjacent to the ecological reservoirs of Buenos Aires. The designed originally called for a 3-story parking garage at the intersection of Macacha Güemes and Juana Manso streets.

However, Balmori Associates’ design took initial entire site submerged the parking underground. This allowed for a 1 acre public plaza which is also a roof garden. This design also takes advantage of riverfront location in close proximity to the reser-voirs. A 6-story winter garden was also designed on the 27th floor to showcase Argentina’s most important native trees such as Jacaranda. The design and lighting of the winter garden allow these trees to be seen throughout the city. Plantings for the site are native & naturalized to form continuity between it and the existing reservoir vegetation. Details such as drainage and fencing design echo the cultural history of the site and use Pampas, ingenious peoples who formerly inhabited site, pat-terns and motifs. Recycled materials were used on site when possible.

Repsol-YPFCLIENT

Completed 2008

STATUS

SIZE

1 Acre

$3,000,000COST

LOCATION Buenos Aires, Argentina

REPSOL BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA


The green roofs and entry courtyard of 240 Central Park South pull the character of Central Park through the building and up to the roof. Contoured ribbons of shrubs and sedums are interwoven with lines of slate, mimicking the rock outcroppings in the park. This landscape is designed to be experienced from multiple viewpoints. Visitors walking by the building catch glimpses of the cherry trees peaking over the parapet wall, while tenets inside the building are surrounded by the rolling ribbons of plants. From the neighboring buildings and apartments above, the multiple levels of rooftops appear to join together into one unified landscape.

Completed 2008

STATUS


240 CENTRAL PARK SOUTHNEW YORK, NY

$300,000 ($23/sf)

Douglas Lister ArchitectOne Union Square WestSuite 505New York, NY 10003

COST

REFERENCE

13,000 sf

Douglas Lister ArchitectSIZE

CLIENT

THE GARDEN THAT CLIMBS THE STAIRS / BILBAO JARDIN 2009 BILBAO , SPAIN


II International Competition: Bilbao Jardin 2009andFundación Bilbao 700

CLIENT

Completed 2009

STATUS

SIZE aprox 80 m2

The garden climbs the stairs, running in undulating lines of different tex-tures and colors. Envisioned as a dynamic urban space; it moves in time and with the seasons. Its lush planting cascades down as though the garden was flowing or melting, bleeding the colors into each other. In one gesture, it narrates a story of landscape taking over and expanding over the Public Space and Architecture, therefore transforming the way that the stairs and the space is perceived and read by the user. It is a garden of contrasts: the contrast between native and exotic plants, between the red flowers and the green grass, between the green grass and the grey paving. In form, the garden engages the horizontal plaza with the rising vertical plane of the steps and the upright gesture of Eduardo Chillida’s sculpture. Like the famous Spanish Steps in Rome, the garden is not only designed for visitors to ascend and descend, but for them to linger, and just be.

As a member of the jury for the second edition of Bilbao Jardín 2009, Diana Balmori was invited to create a garden. Dr. Balmori chose to sit the garden on the steps between two Arata Isozaki towers leading to Santiago Calatrava’s footbridge over the Nervión River. The garden compliments the list of numerous projects of Balmori Associates in Bilbao that includes Abandoibarra Master Plan (competition winner, 1997), Plaza Euskadi (under construction), Campa de los Ingleses (competition winner, 2007.)

THE GARDEN THAT CLIMBS THE STAIRS / BILBAO JARDIN 2009


3D STREET - HUA QIANG BEI ROADSHENZHEN, CHINA


Balmori Associates, Inc.Work AcARUPZhubo Engineering Zhubo

Bureau City Government of Shenzhen

under development

To improve flows, we have organized traffic and enhanced the pedes-trian environment with a green streetscape. We propose a series of specific improvements to bus stops and intersections, providing new taxi drop-offs and underground support space for deliveries. and provided a wide variety of shade trees and seating types, with fountains and a paving pattern that will improve both air flow and pedestrian flow. Both the traffic and landscape systems extend to the surrounding roads to ease congestion and improve the district.

To strengthen the identity of Hua Qiang Bei Road we have 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 orga-nize the flows around them, letting the street breathe better between. They are also bridges, connecting one side of the street to the other. This street life continues below, connecting metro stations and simultaneously creating areas for large public programs. Smaller-scaled nodes include bus stops, newsstands, and seating.

we propose therefore a new kind of urban design approach: urban acu-puncture, 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.

空中公园/ ELEVATED PARK

STATUS

TEAM

CLIENT

BOTANICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF TEXAS

Botanical Research Institute of Texas

CLIENT

SIZE

12 acres+ Green Roof & Walls

In May 2005, the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) selected Balmori Associates to design the landscape for their new facilities in Fort Worth, TX. Taking on a central and unifying role, this parking lot will be more than an asphalt desert. The parking system gathers, filters and reuses rain water on site, provides shade under the canopy of species native to North Central Texas, and operates as an open air botanical laboratory. The site is laid out in spines of research fields and rain gardens so that the parking experience is transformed into a walk through research fields along a tree-shaded and richly planted environment. The botanic theme is made visible and is experienced not just at the building but at the moment of arrival in the often ignored and unpleasant entry: the parking lot.

BRIT is a working landscape displays botanical research in planting beds “systematics”. Systematics includes research toward an understanding of evolutionary relationships among species. Its parking lot is a display of water cleaning plants which are at work in the swell running along each parking lot section; the planted water serves to keep the lot green; its cleaned water is saved for irrigation. The beautiful Fort Worth Prairie, a disappearing landscape, is worked into the back section of the site and it is worked into the green roof to create a niche for preserving it in a new form for the future. The geological strata of the Fort Worth Prairie of thin limestones and sands is recast as a set of seating ledges for outdoor education. Also, the sustainable image of the institute is broadcast also by the walls of the herbarium which are designed with overlapping vines.

Under ConstructionSTATUS

FORT WORTH, TX


$2 millionCOST

H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture902 BroadwayNew York, New York 10010Tel 212 677 6030

REFERENCE

BOTANICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF TEXAS


Camargo Correadesenvolvimento Imobilario

CLIENT This project, called the V.O.I.L. was a collaboration of Balmori Associ-ates with Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects and Atelier 10 . It was designed to preserve the Mata Atlantica forest in Brazil and used this as a driving idea behind the landscape character.

Only 9% of this uniquely Brazilian ecosystem remains and this project celebrates its biodiversity and spatial richness in the urban landscape. The landscape follows the spatial rhythm and patterns of the forest as it weaves across the site and through two towers that make up the architectural program. Circulation, lobbies and gardens are shaped and defined by the urban Mata Atlantica. The trees in the site give site an incredible infrastructure. These trees create magical outdoor spaces of dappled sunlight and shade, noticeably cooler than the sidewalks. The design seeks to expand the natural setting at the base of two new tow-ers. The site is located at the center of a whole district of the city, and at the intersection of many routes in and out of the site.

to be completed 2011

STATUS

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL


Balmori Associates, Inc.Pelli Clarke Pelli ArchietctsAtelier 10

DESIGN TEAM

V.I.O.L. PROJECT SAO PAULO


UB SOLAR PARK

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 tech-nology intersect and proposes a new kind of public space, one that is a pro-grammed 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 col-lective 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 sculp-tures embedded into the structure of the system and an interactive Solar Iceberg glows with the latest solar technologies.

BUFFALO,NY

Finalist 2010STATUS

PROJECT AREA 6 acres

CLIENT University of Buffaloand the New York Power Authority (NYPA)

PASAIA BAY MASTERPLAN

The Bay of Pasaia was once an attractive, natural estuary for the River Oiastzun but over time the waterfront areas have been transformed into large man-made sites for shipyards, warehouses and for the storage of materials and goods. Titled ‘Revealing the Water’, the masterplan is premised on breaking down this artificial land, returning the waterfront sites to their natural state. The masterplan is premised on five planning concepts: (1) revealing the water and transforming the present sites to a hybrid state that allows for new development while improving drainage, water quality and biodiversity; (2) making waterfront parks and open spaces, linked into a wider network of parks and routes around the bay, such as the Camino de Santiago; (3) re-establishing connections to the surrounding context at different scales by road, rail and boat; (4) strengthening the existing neighbourhoods around the bay, reflected in their distinctly different identities, architec-tures, public spaces, streetscapes and relationships to the coastline; (5) building on local know-how to establish an accompanying cultural renewal and branding the site’s future in a solid base of marine and energy technol-ogy, gastronomy and fashion through Paco Rabanne’s label.

Pasaia, Spain


CLIENT

Competition finalist

68 Ha

STATUS

SIZE

Provincial Government of Gipuzkoa,

DESIGN TEAM S333 / IKEI / Lantec


+ =

Two critical parts of public space use need a fresh look: the places and ways of sitting in it, and the places and ways of walking on it. We have become very interested in playing with these elements and the piece that we produced for the “Dome Colony in the San Gabriel’s“, for Fritz Haeg’s two month long exhibition at the X Initiative Art Space was a way of playing with seating and planting. Envisioned as dynamic space and furniture piece; in form, it is a garden that engages the Colony. It is not only designed for visi-tors to move and play with, it is a social community space that invites them to linger, and just be.Can you work with some units for seating which people can assemble them-selves (varying the height closeness to others etc. )? Using this as a premise the units allow you to make nooks where one person can be alone, or some can be for two or a large group. We named the experiment “nooks” for this reason. The secondary idea grafted on this was if plants could be incorporated into the system. This time they are shown conceptually by providing paper flowers that people can plant in the space. The Garden narrates a story of landscape taking over and expanding over the Public Space, therefore changing the way that the space is perceived and read by the user. The users that “plant” flow-ers in it, transform it with time.

on exhibitOctober 2009

STATUS


Fritz Heag Dome Colny X at San Gabriels at X INITIATIVE, 548 West 22nd Street, New York, NY (former Dia building)

CLIENT

“NOOKS” FOR DOME COLONY X IN THE SAN GABRIELS NEW YORK, NY

The proposal for a temporary solution for the public space of Gansevoort Plaza in the Meatpacking District (MPD) used the city’s streets for pedes-trian use in a way that is flexible, inexpensive and contextually appropriate. Under the request of the Meatpacking District Initiative, Balmori Associates was given the task to re-imagine the public spaces created by the new traffic alignments and design a language of street furniture and planting that helped define the space . Before beginning to develop our design principles, we first had to ask, what should a public place be? We wanted to engage a wide audience in answering this question. We set up an online forum through live video and twitter and invited landscape architect Erik de Jong and planner Arnold van der Valk, with their 40 Dutch students to discuss urban public space in the American context. We extended the conversation to the neigh-borhood by participating in a street festival “ Conflux City”, and we also made a video that could be shown in various online blogs. We turned this commu-nity engagement exercise into a preliminary design scheme where one simple and inexpensive piece of furniture with interchangeable components – a pole and hollow pole base, canopy and rubber mats – can perform the functions of planter, shading, space partition, seating, lighting…even a birdhouse. The flexibility of this solution allows for a variety of layout options, from grouped seating at right angles or in triangles, to a weekend market activities or event space.

under design

STATUS


Meat Packing DistrictInitiative833 Washington Street #12New York, NY 10014

CLIENT

BUILDING AN URBAN LIVING ROOM : REDESIGNING THE MEATPACKING NEW YORK, NY

For the new LEED CUNY City Tech Academic Building we created a land-scape that forms a continuous surface from the sidewalk entrance through the lobby to a garden courtyard. The idea is to enliven the public spaces and create a sense of the garden in the lobby. The design plays with a pixilated pattern of the ground that feathers in to the lobby and auditorium and then fades into the courtyard. It’s not as prescribed a movement, but the effect of focusing on primary public functions is the same.

The pattern extrudes in the entry garden to become shallow reflecting pools made of stone, which when turned off are sculptural objects and catch light when turned on. The pattern fades from paved to planting along the curtain wall edge and lobby with both exterior and interior plantings. As the pattern moves through to the courtyard- again the ratio of green to paved transforms into a lush garden with a perimeter of planting. Low water native plant-ings are used and materials will be chosen for their sustainability, reflectivity and efficiency. Recycling water for use in reflecting pools and irrigation is planned.

STATUSunder design


The City University of New YorkCity Tech Campus CUNY, Brooklyn555 West 57th StreetNew York, NY 10019

CLIENT

THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK CITY TECH ACADEMIC BUILDINGBROOKLYN, NY

tree pits(pavers and gravel)

water feature

8’ preforated metal fence+ 6’ retaining wall

egress, stairs to below

sloped wild grass lawn

loading area

benches + stools

Street Trees-Tillia Cordata

subway grates

Con-Ed utility vaults

gate

wild grassplanting mix

gateCourtyard Trees-

Gingko Biloba

embedded LED ground lights

tree pits(pavers and gravel)

water feature

8’ preforated metal fence+ 6’ retaining wall

egress, stairs to below

sloped wild grass lawn

loading area

benches + stools

Street Trees-Tillia Cordata

subway grates

Con-Ed utility vaults

gate

wild grassplanting mix

gateCourtyard Trees-

Gingko Biloba

POLYTECH DORM

HIGH SCHOOL

G. WESTINGHOUSEHIGH SCHOOL

CITY TECHNAMM HALL

G. WESTINGHOUSE

Portfolio Balmori

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