DETAILS
The World Trade Center Building, also known as Cosmos Tower, is the centerpiece of Cosmos City, a mixed-use development along Osaka’s harborfront. The tower’s base is dedicated to public spaces, including a major retail center that, together with the adjoining Asian Trading Center, attracts visitors, office workers and shoppers. The public open spaces consist of a huge indoor-outdoor atrium space and connecting outdoor spaces that create a park-like setting.
The designer’s greatest challenge was the below-grade slabs and rows of concrete ventilators below. Balsley imaginatively reshaped and incorporated these unsightly intruders into intriguing sculptural features with random perforations that allow light and steam to escape. The concrete ventilators in the North Garden have been transformed into a performance stage structure while the six in the South Plaza appear as cone sculptures. Set in a mist pool and glowing red at night, these distinctive stainless steel cones provide an astonishingly beautiful and mysterious sight that helps to define the street level image and stylistic tone for the entire project.
Lite-On Headquarters
This major Taiwanese electronics company chose the “Electronics Center” of Taipei overlooking the Gee Long River for their new headquarters. The overall concept is of a 25-story slender tower rising above a sloped landscape podium that covers much of the site. Below-grade parking slopes toward the river on one side, with the urban center on the oth...
Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel
SWA provided full landscape architectural services for this mixed-use development, which includes a 120-room luxury hotel, five villa residences, a supporting office complex, fitness center, spa and multi-use space. The Sand Hill Hotel and associated offices are nestled onto a dramatic hillside that slopes toward the Santa Cruz Mountains immediately beyond I-2...
Busan Lotte Tower
Busan Lotte World is an extraordinary mixed-use destination for residential, office, hotel, shopping, entertainment, and tourism and includes one of the tallest buildings in the world at 107 stories. The SOM designed tower is composed of four buildings that connect to each other internally via a covered arcade.
The landscape strikes a dramatic pose in t...
Lanchi Aqua Garden Hotel
Thomas Balsley Associates was invited to design one of six hotel villa sites near the ancient city of Xi’an. Collaborating with Joel Sanders Architect, the design draws inspiration from the lifestyle and design principles of traditional Chinese gardens. Like these ancient private retreats, this hotel site is also organized around a series of landscaped courtya...