Celebrating 10 years of Barangaroo Reserve!
Named for an influential Aboriginal woman of pre-colonial Sydney, Barangaroo is a globally-significant, 22-hectare waterfront renewal project that redefines Sydney Harbor. Barangaroo Reserve was the first phase in a 3-district master plan. The project re-created a "Club Cape" headland by transforming a concrete container port into a park with over 75,000 plantings native to the region. Guided by historical maps and paintings, the design of the headland includes a foreshore of 10,000 sandstone blocks excavated directly from the site. Walking and bicycle pathways separated by the "1836 Wall" symbolically mark the original pre-colonial shoreline. A "One Planet Living" project, Barangaroo Reserve reused and recycled all existing materials onsite for the headland. Hidden beneath the new headland, the Cutaway is a massive void formed through sandstone excavation to host art exhibits, performances, or a future Aboriginal Cultural Center. Barangaroo Reserve transforms a huge expanse of empty concrete into usable space for both people and animals on land and in water, marking the transformation of an industrial site into a modern reinvention of its more sustainable past.
We are humbled and excited to be part of the design team with Safdie Architects and Anishinabe Design reimagining the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
Our goal as a team in partnership with the Cherokee Nation is to integrate nature into every experience visitors have within the Heritage Center, reflecting the close, vital connection that the Cherokee people have with the land.
Shown here are a few snaps of our collaboration over the past years:
1. Workshopping with the Cherokee Nation team and stakeholders, Safdie Architects, and Anishinabe Design over a physical site model.
2. Walking among the existing trees on site. The existing forest is the character defining element of the Heritage Center site and we are working to preserve this identity.
3. Visiting the Cherokee Nation Heirloom Garden and Native Plant Site. This garden as well as the Cherokee Seed Bank are incredible resources – these plants represent centuries of Cherokee cultural and agricultural history. Inspiration for our proposed Three Sisters Garden.
🌎 As we celebrate Earth Day, we revisit San Francisco's Salesforce Transit Center, a transformative piece of public architecture that promotes sustainability through its design, its use, and its urban impact.
Consolidating regional transit beneath a single roof, the Transit Center anchors a broader regeneration effort that seeks to heal the scars left by the former bus ramps and the Embarcadero Freeway.
At its heart is a 5.4-acre rooftop park (Downtown San Francisco’s 2nd largest) designed in collaboration with PWP Landscape Architecture, where more than 600 trees and 16,000 plants are organized into botanical zones inspired by California's diverse ecologies, creating an urban sanctuary for San Franciscans while sequestering approximately 12 tons of carbon each year.
A central light column draws sunlight from the park down into the Grand Hall, connecting transit riders to the living environment above. The project introduced several firsts for San Francisco, including the city's most ambitious geothermal system at the time of opening and its first greywater recycling system. Passive daylighting and natural ventilation work alongside these systems to reduce energy consumption by roughly 44 percent relative to a conventional building.
As the park's landscape continues to mature, we are grateful to have had the opportunity to lead such an innovative and transformative project for San Francisco.
📸 @jasonorear
Celebrating World Landscape Architecture Month with a peek behind the scenes of life recently at PWP.
1. Visualizing the distance between trees 2. Salesforce Park presentation to our youngest audience yet 3. The proud medalists of the 2026 PWP Winter Olympics 4. Tree tagging class with Conard 5. Beautiful Bootsie
We are happy to announce 3 promotions. Na Ra Park has been promoted to Partner, Sunmee Lee has been promoted to Senior Associate and Xian Wu has been promoted to Associate.
