We create parks and open spaces that engage, empower, and connect people.
We are a team of architects, planners, urban designers, and landscape architects.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
We plan and design parks and open spaces that improve quality of life, foster economic development, and protect the environment.
With offices in Philadelphia and San Francisco, seeks to initiate, understand, and execute projects that create simple and effective solutions for complex problems across all scales. We embrace our roots of 55 years, and continue the legacy of design that has flowed through the firm for the past five decades. Our approach to any project is rooted in an environmental ethos which frames our understanding and forms the basis for creative and appropriate response.
We work to understand what makes each assignment unique—the political, economic, natural, and administrative realities that enable us to create enduring projects. Our plans and designs are not predicated on a specific form or style, but rather driven by attention to specific local contexts and conditions, backed up by decades of institutional knowledge from working in the public realm.
We create resilient communities. With a 50-year legacy of designing with nature, we understand park networks and open spaces as ecosystems, comprised of people, natural processes, institutions, and built infrastructure. When these systems are in balance, they can both thrive in the present and adapt to changing conditions. By designing for resilience, we create public spaces that prepare us for climate threats while providing vibrant, healthy, sustainable places for our communities to live, work, and play—now and into the future.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Bothin Marsh Adaptation Plan Mill Valley, CA
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
The Parklands of Floyds Fork LOUISVILLE, KY
The Floyds Fork River is located on the eastern edge of the Louisville Metro area in Jefferson County, Kentucky. The Parklands of Floyds Fork (the Parklands), is a 20-mile long, 4,000-acre public park currently nearing completion within the river corridor. WRT’s master plan and subsequent design established direction for four regional parks connected by a greenway, meandering along the lush Kentucky bottomlands and flanking hillsides. By securing open space ahead of the development curve, Louisville is using parkland to proactively shape future development. Three strategies organized the master plan concept: Framework - The framework shapes the spatial context of the park, including preservation and restoration of the forest, meadows, wetlands, and watercourses; Connectivity - The connectivity component includes the River itself, the park road, the Loop trail, the bridges, and the secondary, wilder paths that provide access to and through the rooms of the Parklands; and Theater The theatrical component includes the construction of ecological and recreational facilities, providing distinctive places for people to gather, learn, and play. What We Did Planning, Landscape Architecture
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Georgetown Waterfront Park Washington, DC
The Georgetown Waterfront Park faces the Potomac River in historic Georgetown in the District of Columbia. The 10-acre park represents a 40-year effort to transform the Georgetown waterfront from an obsolete industrial site into a signature civic space meeting both national and local community aspirations. WRT was the lead design firm through a 9-year, two-phased implementation process involving numerous public meetings, fundraising, and coordination with District and federal agencies. The design aimed to express the confluence of a historic wharf environment with the garden-oriented townscape that defines Georgetown. This layered approach led to the creation of sectionalized spaces dividing the park into garden rooms, like divisions in a ship’s hull, framed by wide walkways extending the street grid to the waterfront. Overlooks afford wide river views and the opportunity to track the site’s history through imagery etched onto tilted granite displays. A wide promenade links the garden rooms to the water’s edge, where railings were eschewed in favor of planting as a way to dramatize the notion of a waterside garden. What We Did Urban Design, Planning, Landscape Architecture
We adhere to the adaptive process of creative fitting. We adhere to the adaptive process of “creative fitting” to find the balance between the changing needs of users and the environment’s capacity to sustainably incorporate these needs. This process is driven by the inherent character of a site and the particular ways in which it is used and valued by people.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Dutch Kills Green Queens, NY
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
The Bethlehem Steel Corporation was a 20th century industrial powerhouse that operated facilities around the globe. The site offered many environmental challenges, due to the presence of soils that could not be disturbed or penetrated, except in isolated cases. Large areas of existing building foundations were removed, exchanging impervious cover for previous, and minimizing the generation of stormwater runoff. Plantings were brought to the site where none existed beforehand, increasing the site’s biomass, and a low level of illumination was accepted as a way to minimize energy consumption. Socially, the project has engaged the local community, offering a “town green” for future uses that will bring new urban life to the heart of Bethlehem in support of regional development initiatives. Our parks and open spaces are designed with an attention to specific attributes and local context, including details that are relevant and relatable, not imported or imposed from other places and assignments. Each project is unique, and we strive to discover and reveal the special qualities that give each public space its own identity. Awards Rudy Bruner Award Winner, 2017 What We Did Architecture, Urban Design, Landscape Architecture
We are committed to equity and health. Every community deserves safe, convenient access to high quality public spaces where people can exercise, socialize, and interact with nature. Our work is imbued with public purpose, creating healthier, more vibrant environments that can improve quality of life for generations to come. Parks create opportunities for play, exercise, escape, community cohesion, and contact with nature. They support healthy people, create value in neighborhoods, and contribute to social equity at a city and regional scale.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Kemp Mill Silver Spring, MD
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Mariposa Park San Francisco, California
Mariposa Park is a 2.5 acre urban park located in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco. Developed in conjunction with the UCSF Russell Benioff Children’s Hospital, the park provides a multi-functional outdoor space for patients, hospital staff, and the surrounding neighborhood to picnic, play, and relax in a rich and ecologically vibrant landscape. Born out of extensive community dialogue, the design creates a distinctive landscape of forms and elements that celebrate the heritage of the industrial waterfront and local ecology. Park ecology is both meaningful and character-defining. Planting promotes biodiversity through use of extensive native species that attract birds and beneficial insects. Butterflies, as inspiration for the park’s biomorphic forms and the park’s namesake, are particularly supported. Plant species associated with the endemic and endangered Mission Blue butterfly are included. Stormwater is managed through vegetated swales and other LID techniques. Children’s play features continue the theme of butterflies, through the four stages of metamorphosis — itself a metaphor for healing – expressed by colored egg spheres, caterpillar balancing balls, a web cocoon climber swing, and flight lift off mounds. Awards ASLA Northern California, Merit Award, 2018 What We Did Urban Design, Landscape Architecture
We believe design should be inclusive. As planners and designers, we are dedicated to engaging and empowering underrepresented and hard-to-reach stakeholders. We partner with community organizations, civic authorities, land trusts, and non-profit groups to bring visions to reality. From start to finish, we do the work of reaching out, listening, and responding, ensuring people’s ideas, needs, and desires are effectively addressed. Through partnerships we gain a shared knowledge base that helps unlock funding, leading to successful implementation and a sense of ownership for all stakeholders.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Cleveland Harbor Eastern Embayment Resilience Study (CHEERS) Cleveland. OH
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
FDR Park Master Plan Philadelphia, PA
WRT recently completed the FDR Park Master Plan: A Resilient Vison for a Historic Park. Working with the Fairmount Park Conservancy and Philadelphia Parks and Recreation the master plan offers a once in a generation opportunity to reimagine a historic Olmsted park to serve 21st Century Philadelphians. This plan leverages the power of parks to provide access to recreational opportunities, spur local economies, and protect Philadelphia from climate change. It presents an ecologically resilient, community-supported vision for the future of FDR Park and positions it as a critical piece of civic and public health infrastructure. Engagement was critical in educating park users about the park’s role in community resiliency, and to building a strong vision that will mobilize the community to make the plan a reality. During the year-long planning process, the project team engaged over 3,000 community members including recent immigrants, non-English speaking communities, youth, and seniors by partnering with trusted communitybased organizations. What We Did Master Planning, Landscape Architecture
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Mariposa Creekway Master Plan Mariposa County, CA
PLANNING AND DESIGN
Riverwalk Des Moines, IA
We see ourselves as an extension of our clients’ team. We respect the context of each project at every step of the process, understanding that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution for the work we do. We benefit from the cross-pollination of ideas, perspectives, and techniques by emphasizing integrative learning, critical thinking, and collaborative problem solving.
PLANNING AND DESIGN
Georgetown Waterfront Park Washington, DC
WRT has received more than 400 local and national planning and design awards. We were one of the first firms to tackle issues of ecological, social, and economic resiliency with large scale interventions and planning— something we remain committed to today. WRT has received numerous design awards including the ASLA National Firm ward and the inaugural PA Excellence Award.
Paseo Verde, Philadelphia, PA The nation’s first LEED Platinum Neighborhood Development certification (second in the world). John C. Anderson Apartments, Philadelphia, PA One of the first LGBT-friendly affordable senior housing developments in the country. Microsoft Campus, Silicon Valley, CA The first Net-Zero Water campus in the nation (also LEED, Living Building Challenge, and Well Building Standard certifications). GreenPlan Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA The city’s first integrated, sustainable city-wide open space planning framework.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Oyama Yuen Harvest Walk Oyama-Shi, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza Philadelphia, PA
We create transformative impact through planning and design. WRT’s success is based on our tradition of excellence, innovation, and leadership in planning and design, and our commitment to the firm’s guiding principles of designing with nature and reinforcing urbanism.
COVER PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
The Parklands of Floyds Fork Louisville, KY
WRT’s pioneering spirit guides our practice, transforming introspection into actionable new ways of serving our communities while remaining true to our collective values.
We design and plan for education, housing and neighborhoods, community developments, parks and open spaces.
PHILADELPHIA
SAN FRANCISCO
1700 Market Street, Suite 2800 Philadelphia, PA 19103T: 215.732.5215
478 Tehama Street, Suite 2B San Francisco, CA 94103 T: 415.575.4722
www.wrtdesign.com