Main Street Garden Dallas park, Texan landscape architecture, TX building, Architects USA
Main Street Garden Dallas
Texas Landscape Development, United States of America design by Thomas Balsley Associates (TBA).
Jun 11, 2010
Landscape Architects Thomas Balsley Associates Design New Park For Downtown Dallas, Texas
Civic Monument in Vital Commercial District Is Area’s First Public Park
image courtesy of Landscape Architects Thomas Balsley Associates
Main Street Garden
DALLAS, TX – International landscape architects Thomas Balsley Associates announce the completion of Main Street Garden, Dallas’ first new urban-core public park. With the opening of the new two-acre public space, Dallas puts the capstone on an extraordinary initiative to revitalize and enhance downtown life for new residents. “The Main Street Miracle,” as the area’s recent revival is being called, comprises a resurgence across all sectors of the local community, and Main Street Garden is the catalyst for much of that change.
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Says founding principal Thomas Balsley, “The Dallas project achieves one of the primary design goals of our office: fostering the growth of active, thriving public life through the creation of coherent urban environments. The park’s striking public pose gives downtown Dallas a sense of place and a common ground for its diverse constituency of students, office workers, new residents and shoppers.”
Resting comfortably in the shadow of its two landmark neighbors, the Dallas Municipal Building and Texas Commerce Tower, Main Street Garden’s 21st-century design vocabulary speaks to the city’s future. The park features a large open lawn around which a café/kiosk, seating areas, tot lot, central plaza, water feature, urban dog run, garden/study rooms and distinctive shade structures are arranged. Linear “bar code” gardens run along the park’s borders and are furnished in perennial and ornamental grasses resting beneath a canopy of colorful crepe myrtle trees.
image courtesy of architects practice
The rows of green glass “study shelters” and double-width lounge chairs arranged in and around the gardens act as intimate vantage points to observe the goings-on in both park and street, while a light installation by artist LSLP incorporated into the garden-room shelters makes the park a bright beacon in the middle of the Main Street nightscape. A diversity of venues for neighborhood and civic events are furnished by multi-sealed, flexible outdoor spaces scattered around the site; as added features to draw visitors from around the city and region, these spaces help make Main Street Garden the engine to return cultural and economic vitality to Dallas’ long-neglected downtown.
Thomas Balsley Associates – TBA
For over 35 years, Thomas Balsley Associates has reshaped urban space around the world by designing landscapes that teem with public life. TBA projects range from feasibility planning studies to built urban parks, waterfronts, commercial, residential and recreational landscapes. Scales of work range from master plans small urban spaces and urban furniture.
Central to the firm’s design approach is Thomas Balsley’s belief that, “Public open spaces are the great democratic spaces, the ultimate common ground.” In New York City alone, the firm has designed more than 100 public parks and plazas including Chelsea Waterside Park and Riverside Park South. Projects outside New York include Hunters Point Shipyard/Candlestick in San Francisco, Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park in Tampa, Skyline Park in Denver, West Shore Park in Baltimore, the World Trade Center Plaza in Osaka, Japan and the Magok Waterfront in South Korea.
Main Street Garden Dallas images / information from Thomas Balsley Associates landscape architects
Location: Dallas, Texas, USA
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