Windows into Boston

Boston Visions Design Competition

“Windows into Boston,” one of thirty-two concepts published in the Boston Visions National Design Competition catalog, provided new glimpses into the city’s exciting and important world of underground urban systems. This design proposal, developed by Ed Shoucair of the Collaborative and Don Reed, involved the installation of a variety of openings – via “windows” – into the seldom-seen and under-appreciated subterranean cityscape of pipes, telephone cables, subways, roadways, and gas lines.

The windows provide permanent views of the city’s infrastructure and present a new urban aesthetic. Adjacent interpretive plaques help increase awareness of Boston’s man-made environment and raise appreciation of the effort involved in building the city. A large window along the depressed Central Artery tunnel reveals multiple layers of the city’s past and present.

Pope John Paul II Park

City of Boston, MA

The Collaborative prepared conceptual designs for the 75-acre Pope John Paul II Park. Opened in 2001, this park is located on a former landfill along the Neponset River. The Collaborative’s team developed the park’s program and design based on extensive research, including demographic studies to determine local and regional recreational needs and access. The program accommodated a wide variety of active and passive recreation, and included a multi-use community and recreation center, environmental education areas around a restored marsh, playing fields, recreational spray pool, playgrounds, and historic and environmental interpretive designs.

The park is managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation. The DCR has restored a salt marsh area and planted native trees and shrubs. The area now attracts an increased variety of birds to the habitat, including snowy egrets and great blue herons.

Heritage Park and Hotel

City of Gloucester, MA

The Collaborative’s plan and design for Gloucester Place celebrates the City of Gloucester’s heritage as America’s oldest fishing port. The plan is organized around a waterfront heritage park that gives residents a place in the heart of the city to gather, recreate, and continue to understand its relationship with the sea.

A nearby hotel produces the tax revenues to pay for the park, boosting the city’s economic vitality by bringing people downtown, while adding a new destination for residents and others to enjoy and learn more about Gloucester. The heritage hotel and conference center offers hotel developers a harbor view site outside the port district. The City benefits from added taxes to construct and maintain the new park. The thousands of hotel guests annually generate income for downtown businesses.

Connecticut River Walk and Bikeway

City of Springfield, MA

The Collaborative provided landscape architectural services to VHB in the development of the popular Connecticut River Walk and Bikeway for the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. In addition to trail concept design, the Collaborative worked with VHB engineers to develop construction drawings. Collaborative’s designers also developed a trail logo used to mark and market the trail.

To date, several sections of the trail are open, including the 3.7 mile path along downtown Springfield and Basketball Hall of Fame and the 1.7 mile loop across the river in Agawam. This remains one of the city’s hidden treasures more than a decade after it opened with great fanfare.

Parts of the path offer majestic views of the river’s sweep, the graceful arches of the Memorial Bridge, signs of Springfield’s industrial past, and the wildlife that thrives there.

Union Crossing

City of Lawrence, MA

The Collaborative’s Landscape Architecture/Urban Design Group created the design for Union Crossing in Lawrence, MA, transforming a traditional industrial district into a new and vibrant neighborhood. New housing and a day care facility on the site will help accommodate temporary and permanent personnel for the nearby medical facility. The design approach provides for almost an acre of “green” deck for a variety of passive and active recreational uses. The design includes a large lawn, shade trees, an orchard of fruit trees, and raised planters for a community garden. A rain garden forms part of the overall rain-water harvesting system and will be fed by a series of upland bioswales. 100 trees of varying size and species have been planted.

Hospital Campus Plan & Sculpture Park

Lehigh Valley Hospital

Collaborative VP of Design Kaye Lynn Johnson designed a campus plan and sculpture park for the 120-acre Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, PA, a regional acute care facility with over 14,000 daily visitors. Thirty-two major pieces of art were selected and sited in settings across the campus, creating outdoor spaces that interpreted the landform, the area’s cultural history and aesthetic qualities of the sculptures themselves.

This sculpture garden is listed in “Sculpture Magazine” in their directory of sculpture gardens with the following short description: “Philip and Muriel Berman Sculpture Park: The Nation’s largest display of outdoor art in a healthcare setting with 28 works by Cassidy, Garofalo, Gordon, Hide, Hock, Isherwood, Kainz, Macklin, Shaw, Sternal, and Zweygardt.”

Abernathy Greenway

City of Sandy Springs, GA

The Collaborative’s John Cheek created the original concept design for the highly used Abernathy Greenway. The Greenway includes a parkway and adjoining linear park that both buffers and serves neighborhoods along Johnson Ferry Road and Abernathy Road in the City of Sandy Springs, GA. Firm designers later coordinated the project’s final design and construction. Services included concept design, design details for signs, neighbor property screening, and the placement of playable art commissioned by a local non-profit. Each of the six art pieces required the design of a safety surfacing zone, adjustment of site grading and the redesign of plant beds. The Collaborative directed the installation of 20,000 plants. For the implementation of the Greenway’s trail network, the Collaborative oversaw the installation of paving using a pervious paver system.

The 6.6 acre linear park opened July 2014. Atlanta Magazine named The Playable Art Park a “Best of Atlanta 2014” park. In the true spirit of collaboration, a community group, consisting of neighborhood representatives, worked with the city throughout the planning and construction phases, helping guide the vision.

Riverside Drive Roundabouts

Georgia Department of Transportation

In 2016, the Collaborative took on a unique challenge in Sandy Springs, Georgia. Two new roundabouts at the interchange of I-285 and Riverside Drive were in need of landscaping to capture the salient qualities of the nearby Chattahoochee River. The Collaborative created a design that successfully mirrored the best features of the 434-mile-long Chattahoochee River which rises high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia and flows southwesterly toward the Alabama state line. The Chattahoochee River Basin is inhabited by about 24 species of freshwater aquatic turtles, about 37 species of salamanders and sirens, about 30 species of frogs and toads, and the American alligator. It is also home to 9 state threatened or endangered plant species.

Low blue metal panels and grey-blue fescue grass recall the flowing river. Brown stones, along with green shrubs and trees mark the shoreline. Street pavers and stone walls visually connect the flowing course of the river across both circles.

Boston’s Bridge Park

Massachusetts Highway Department

This new waterfront park, located next to a Central Artery/Tunnel Vent Building, serves as a dramatic memorial to Boston’s commercial past. The park preserves and incorporates mechanical components of two historic bridges located near the site , one of which was an example of a Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge, the oldest surviving bridge of its type in the country.

The Collaborative designed and prepared construction documents for this important addition to the Boston Harborwalk. The design of the park includes elements that recall the history of Boston’s commercial waterfront, while providing a comfortable gathering area for pedestrians to enjoy

NYC Penn Station Redevelopment

Federal Railroad Administration

The Collaborative played a key role in efforts to redevelop NYC’s Pennsylvania Station. Redevelopment involves transferring most of Amtrak’s operations from the existing Pennsylvania Station underneath Madison Square Garden into the historic landmark James A. Farley Post Office Building across 8th Avenue. In helping to assess the viability of the project, the Collaborative examined the project’s potential regarding pedestrian circulation within and around the new station complex, land use and economic opportunities, and what the redevelopment project would mean to the local residential and commercial communities.

Today, the $1.6 Billion project is underway. The plan transforms the Farley building into an enormous 255,000-square-foot train hall, with a 92-foot skylight that’s meant to evoke the look and feel of the old Penn Station—as in, the one designed by McKim, Mead and White back at the turn of the 20th century.