We create educational places that engage, empower, and connect people.
WRT is a team of architects, planners, urban designers, and landscape architects.
EDUCATION
Stevens Institute of Technology Academic Gateway Center Hoboken, NJ
We believe in the power of places to strengthen and transform learning.
With offices in Philadelphia and San Francisco, WRT Initiates, understands, and executes 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 is holistic, 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 campus contexts and conditions, backed up by decades of institutional knowledge from designing and planning educational spaces.
We create thoughtful campus places. We view the entire campus as a learning environment knitting together traditional and contemporary forms. We reinforce a sense of community and identity through thoughtfully crafted spaces that support learning, personal growth, and student wellbeing.
EDUCATION
Springside Chestnut Hill Academy Philadelphia, PA
We believe design is inclusive. We are known for our ability to see the big picture and make important connections. We foster equity and inclusion by listening to diverse voices on and off campus. Our collaborative approach delivers successful designs that support a range of learning and teaching styles, as well as broader academic and research goals.
EDUCATION Stevens Institute of Technology Academic Gateway Center Hoboken, NJ
Design has the power to lift the human spirit. We integrate indoor and outdoor environments, creating opportunities for learning, gathering, and strengthening social connections. We consider rich materials, views, and light as an essential part of our process in creating spaces that transform, nurture, and inspire.
EDUCATION
Cabrini University Southern Residence Hall Radnor, PA
We design within context. Every project presents an opportunity to thoughtfully respond to the unique characteristics of a community. We don’t impose a particular design aesthetic, but rather design within the context of an existing neighborhood. We thrive when faced with challenges of a complex urban site or a distinctive existing building.
HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOODS
John C. Anderson Philadelphia, PA
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT EDUCATION
Stevens Institute of Technology Campus Master Plan Hoboken, New Jersey
WRT was engaged by Stevens to master plan the expansion of its campus, overlooking the Hudson River. Key elements of the process included engagement with the city of Hoboken to strengthen campus connections and create a clearer threshold at neighborhood edges, including new campus gateways adjacent to the surrounding neighborhood and a waterfront linear park. The plan called for extensive new space for classrooms, research, residential, and student life facilities. Each new building was planned to engage and animate the campus, which is also intended to serve as a semi-public park for the City of Hoboken. Enhancing community connections was a large part of the master plan. A proposed mixed-use development will provide good residential space, possibly for upperclassmen at the edge of the campus. WRT is involved with several architectural projects that emerged from the Master Plan. These include the Gateway Academic Complex, an 90,000 GSF classroom and research facility; Campus University Center, 80,000 sf complex providing dining, student activities and lounge space for students as well as multi-purpose space for conferences and events; the Center for Engineering, Science and Innovation, a 40,000 sf lab and classroom building that includes much-needed structured parking. What We Did Master Planning, Architecture, Design, Landscape Architecture
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT EDUCATION
San Francisco State University Campus Master Plan San Francisco, CA
The intention of the master plan is to begin shifting the campus from a commuter campus to a resident campus providing a balance of academic, residential and support uses – essentially strengthening the function and sense of “community”. The master plan proposes to reorganize the composition of the campus by opening up the existing valley as a major natural and recreational resource, replacing outdated academic buildings over time, adding residential capacity, strengthening the urban edge along 19th Avenue, locating key facilities at the four corners of campus creating college main streets through the north and south edges of campus and establishing a series of formal landscaped axes linking important destinations and providing permeability through the campus to adjacent neighborhoods and natural areas. The ideas supported by the plan present a new direction for the campus – one that restores a lost ecology and engages a model of sustainability through redirecting the campus towards its historic watercourse and neighborhood setting and also creating a lighter-footprint community that relies less on automobile access and encourages transituse, walking and cycling. What We Did Campus Master Planning
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT EDUCATION
San Francisco State University Holloway Avenue Visioning Study San Francisco, CA
WRT’s Campus Master Plan for San Francisco State University (SF State) set a clear strategy for creating new housing districts augmented by “college main street” ground floor uses. The strategy focused on increasing the housing stock for student, faculty and staff housing through higher density redevelopment, while also creating a college town environment for the campus and neighborhood that had never fully materialized with its development as a commuter campus. What We Did Campus Master Planning, Urban Design, Sustainability, and Landscape Architecture
BLOCK 5 PEDESTRIAN CONNECTION TO PARK MERCED
BLOCK 6 PEDESTRIAN CONNECTION TO PARK MERCED
TRANSIT PLAZA FUTURE MUNI STATION
LIBRA ADMIN LANDMARK TOWER ELEMENT
CAMPUS HOLLOWAY ENTRY
ADMIN CON CA
PEDESTRIAN CONNECTION TO PARK MERCED
BLOCK 2
THEATER
ARTS PLAZA
ARTS WALK TO CAMPUS
CLASSROOMS CLASSROOMS C E N T E N N I A L WAY
LIBRARY
ARY PLAZA
NECTIONS TO MPUS QUAD
CONNECTIONS TO CAMPUS
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT EDUCATION
UCSF Parnassus Avenue Master Plan San Francisco, CA
Given its incremental growth and neighborhood setting, the campus has been challenged to provide a cohesive campus environment while also serving the surrounding community. Parnassus Avenue itself, is a busy city corridor providing for the competing interests of transit service, vehicles, deliveries, pedestrians and bicyclists. The Parnassus Avenue Master Plan and Guidelines work together to bring cohesion to this disparate environment and also create a strong identity for the core of the UCSF campus. The plan establishes a design language which simultaneously unifies the campus while distinguishing the institutional setting from its residential and natural surroundings. The design streamlines and simplifies the streetscape elements to create a strong sense of “campus” along the Parnassus corridor and also opens the core of the campus to everyday use by connecting internal campus public space more strongly to Parnassus Avenue. What We Did Campus Master Planning, Urban Design, Sustainability, and Landscape Architecture
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT EDUCATION
Muhlenberg College Campus Master Plan Allentown, PA
The Campus Master Plan integrates two distinct parts of campus, carefully preserving the original campus layout organized around the College Green and expanding it to provide a flexible development framework. The plan replaces existing surface parking with programmed open spaces and new buildings at the north and south ends of the campus to expand and unify the academic core and infill new buildings sensitively and create appropriately scaled transitions between the campus and the surrounding neighborhood. With Muhlenberg’s Strategic Plan as a framework, the Campus Master Plan focused on three key components: 1) Engaging liberal arts learning; 2) Enhancing the campus community; and 3) Reinventing residential life at Muhlenberg. It sought to integrate existing structures, replace outdated spaces, and create inviting, connected, and inspirational learning environments in tune with the College’s goals. What We Did Master Planning, Architecture, Landscape Architecture
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOODS
Paseo Verde Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Adjacent to Temple University in North Philadelphia, this transit-oriented development transformed a 2-acre brownfield site into vibrant mixed-use affordable and market-rate workforce housing. Paseo Verde offers 120 units of sustainable housing for low and moderate income families, approximately 30,000 SF of ground floor retail and community services, commercial office space, and parking. Situated at the physical dividing line between the APM neighborhood and Temple University, the mixed-use site weaves the two neighborhoods together and leverages the pedestrian-rich environment of the adjoining transit station. In addition to achieving LEED for Homes Platinum certification, Paseo Verde was the first project in the nation to achieve a LEED for Neighborhood Development Platinum certification, and is now seen as a model for sustainable redevelopment in inner-city neighborhoods. What We Did Planning, Architecture, Urban Design Awards Congress for the New Urbanism, Merit Award Urban Land Institute Philadelphia, Inaugural Awards for Excellence/ AIA Pennsylvania, Merit Award, Unbuilt Category
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOODS
John C. Anderson Apartments Philadelphia, PA
The goal in this project was to provide affordable housing open to all low-income persons 62 years or older, but to do so in an environment that celebrates diversity and creates a setting where elders of the LGBTQ community can feel fully welcome and secure. The 56-unit, six-story complex is located in the core of Philadelphia’s dense and vibrant Washington Square West neighborhood. Fronting on busy 13th Street where it abuts highrise neighbors, but also extending back to one of Philadelphia’s “littlest streets” revered for its charming residential character, the project presented very unique urban design and architectural challenges. The ground floor has 1,800 SF of commercial space, some of which is reserved for communal building purposes. What We Did Architecture, Design, Landscape Architecture Awards AIA National, National Housing Award AIA PA, Paul Davidoff Planning Achievement Award
EDUCATION
Stevens Institute of Technology Academic Gateway Center Philadelphia, PA
EDUCATION
Muhlenberg College Campus Master Plan Allentown, PA
We are stewards of your vision. With a foundation of trust and mutual respect, we embrace your goals as our own and work alongside you to celebrate the nuances of your culture, challenges, and opportunities to create impactful educational spaces. We are committed to advancing institutional goals through connecting master planning to your strategic plan and campus vision.
PHILADELPHIA
SAN FRANCISCO
1700 Market Street, Suite 2800 Philadelphia, PA 19103 T: 215.732.5215
478 Tehama Street, Suite 2B San Francisco, CA 94103 T: 415.575.4722
www.wrtdesign.com