We create places that engage, empower, and connect people.
WRT is a team of architects, planners, urban designers, and landscape architects.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Mariposa Park San Francisco, CA
WRT is an interdisciplinary practice, we create inventive solutions for complex projects of all sizes and scales. Our work is imbued with public purpose, creating healthier, more vibrant environments in which to live, work, learn, and play, while establishing vital frameworks to improve quality of life future generations. We value the impact of our collective approach to create simple solutions for complex problems across scales. We serve communities and campuses by designing places that enhance the natural and social environment.
With offices in Philadelphia and San Francisco, we seek to initiate, understand, and execute projects that create simple and effective solutions. We embrace our roots of 55 years, and continue the legacy of design that has flowed through the firm for the past five decades. We apply our design and planning capabilities to the areas of Education, Housing and Neighborhoods, Communities, Parks and Open spaces.
We were one of the first firms to tackle issues of ecological, social, and economic resiliency with large scale interventions and planning.
PLANNING AND DESIGN
Adobe Lehi, UT
Since 1963, WRT has been a pioneering firm of people who want to change the world. Our founders established methods and principles that are now commonplace: an interdisciplinary approach requiring collaboration across disciplines, an emphasis on an ethos rather than a signature aesthetic to unify our work, and a commitment to sustainable planning and design.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
The Parklands of Floyds Fork Louisville, KY
We make places that engage people. To ensure the issues and concerns most important to our clients are effectively addressed, we guide the development of projects through a process that depends upon a sound understanding of their values and aspirations. Obtained through early and continuous stakeholder involvement, our national perspective on place-based design, and a commitment to understanding the site-specific opportunities and challenges as a basis for strategic decision-making. We believe in finding a creative fit— the highest and best solution for a specific environment or community. We design for lasting impact, working collaboratively as strategic partners to create solutions for our clients’ most immediate challenges while considering and calibrating long-term repercussions.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Dutch Kills Green Queens, NY
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Glen Canyon Park Improvement Plan San Francisco, CA
Our commitment to community engagement allows us to ask the right questions, uncover unique needs and aspirations, and translate them into simple, functional planning and design solutions. We employ an iterative process that depends upon, and is responsive to, community values and aspirations. Our national perspective on placebased design, and a commitment to understanding the site-specific opportunities and challenges as a basis for strategic decision-making.
WRT’s pioneering spirit guides our practice, transforming introspection into actionable new ways of serving our communities while remaining true to our collective values.
PLANNING AND DESIGN
Adobe Lehi, UT
EDUCATION
Stevens Institute of Technology Academic Gateway Center Hoboken, NJ
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT EDUCATION
Stevens Institute of Technology Gateway Academic Center Hoboken, New Jersey
WRT was engaged by Stevens Institute to master plan the expansion of its campus overlooking the Hudson River. The plan called for new classroom, research, residential, and student life facilities. The campus masterplanning effort encompassed a major rethinking of Stevens’ open space network, which will include a significant new linear park designed to reorient the campus center toward sweeping views of Manhattan. Each new building will be designed and sited to engage and animate this green corridor 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, and several specific architectural projects emerged as a result. Taken as a whole, these projects will not only enhance the lives of the Institute’s students and faculty, but they will also allow Stevens to address many recent issues in campus planning including innovations in teaching environments, community outreach, and sustainability. What We Did: Architecture, Design, Landscape Architecture
We make places that empower people. Our work is imbued with public purpose. We establish vital frameworks and design healthier, more vibrant environments that level the playing field for our most vulnerable citizens. Our commitment to our engagement process allows us to ask the right questions, uncover unique needs and aspirations, and translate them into simple, functional planning and design solutions. 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.
HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOODS
John C. Anderson Apartments Philadelphia, PA
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Mariposa Park San Francisco, CA
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
The Parklands of Floyds Fork Louisville, KY
We care about the social, ecological, and economic health of cities, communities, and campuses. We believe in simplicity and functionality, and we work with clarity and purpose to engage and empower communities. Through it all, we remain committed to design excellence, as we strive to enhance and reflect nature through projects that address the unique concerns and needs of each project and circumstance. Our process and a product gains widespread acceptance, reflects aspirations, and serves as a catalyst for future action.
At our core, we believe that while talent is universal, opportunity is not. Our projects address this inequity by tackling issues of housing affordability/ insecurity, mitigating gentrification/ displacement, advocating for environmental justice, supporting local economies, building local capacity, focusing on health and well-being, and ultimately rebalancing social determinants of health—so that talent can thrive everywhere.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT COMMUNITY DESIGN
El Corazón Cultural Center — Taller Puertorriqueño Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Taller Puertorriqueño (Taller - Spanish for “workshop”) is a community-based grassroots organization founded in 1974 to address the lack of access to art and education for inner-city youth. Reflecting a strong Latino heritage common to the majority of residents in distressed North Philadelphia neighborhoods, the organization’s primary purpose is to preserve, develop and promote Puerto Rican arts and culture, grounded in the conviction that embracing one’s cultural heritage is central to community empowerment. Facilitating spaces for multiple uses was a key element in the design of the building, which must accommodate varying programs and events throughout the day, evening and weekend. The building’s program areas include: a performance space that can seat more than 250 people or be subdivided into drama, dance and tutoring classrooms; an art gallery showcasing the work of local and national artists; a bilingual book and gift shop; multiple classrooms that will allow for the expansion of art and information technology programs and after school activities; two commercial grade kitchens supporting a meal service for after-school programs and a café serving Puerto Rican cuisine to the local community. The office wing provides spaces for Taller Puertorriqueño offices and a flexible 3,000SF “office incubator” for lease to support the building’s operational costs. What We Did: Planning, Architecture
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Principal Riverwalk Des Moines, IA
EDUCATION
Springside Chestnut Hill Academy McCausland Lower School Philadelphia, PA
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Santa Monica Waterfront Santa Monica, CA
We respond to our clients’ most immediate challenges— while considering the impact on future generations. Our work is imbued with public purpose. We establish vital urban frameworks and design healthier, more vibrant environments that level the playing field for our most vulnerable citizens. Rather than impose a particular aesthetic, we pursue the most creative fit, creating vibrant, healthy, functional, and sustainable places to live, learn, work, and play.
To get there, we employ a rigorous design process that maximizes the diverse skills of our interdisciplinary team and challenges us to look beyond a particular aesthetic to focus on the context of a place.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOODS
Paseo Verde Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
WRT worked with Jonathan Rose Companies and Asociación de Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM) to develop a 2-acre brownfield site adjacent to the SEPTA Regional Rail Temple University station – the fourth busiest stop in the regional transit system. This transit-oriented development delivers a mixed-use program focused on 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. The project caps a decade-long planning effort by APM to re-integrate the community with the neighboring Temple University campus and to the city itself, and has been a major contributing factor in the successful Choice Neighborhoods grant applications for the adjoining neighborhood. What We Did: Planning, Architecture, Urban Design
We make places that connect people. For decades, WRT’s practice has championed the concept of designing with nature— learning from the natural systems in which we operate to build an understanding of an ecological system’s context, composition, challenges, and potential. Today, our idea of designing with nature acknowledges that the world is complex, integrated, and undergoing rapid change—often caused by mankind itself. Our long-standing belief in designing with nature acknowledges that the world is complex, integrated, and undergoing rapid change—often caused by mankind itself. As our environmental ethos continues to grow ever more inclusive in scope, this change in nature calls on us to think bigger than our individual lives.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Oyama Yuen Harvest Walk Oyama-Shi, Tochigi Prefecture, JP
WRT’s practice has championed the concept of designing with nature.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
The Parklands of Floyds Fork Louisville, KY
WRT was among the first planning and design firms to recognize the need to “design with nature” in order to sustain natural resources and provide a healthy living environment for all. We bring our expertise in ecology, parks and open space, green stormwater infrastructure, and revitalization of urban neighborhoods and districts to mitigate the vulnerabilities and challenges communities face and help them adapt for an ever-changing future.
We work address and integrate complex issues related to quality of life and physical character, growth management, economic and fiscal health, infrastructure capacity, and resource preservation and activation. We embrace our roots, yet we do not bind ourselves to its style or prose. We believe everyone deserves safe, convenient access to high quality public spaces where people can exercise, socialize, reflect and interact with nature.
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
FDR Park Redevelopment Master Plan Philadelphia, PA
HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOODS
Paseo Verde Philadelphia, PA
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. It was founded in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley in 1857, eventually occupying 1,800 acres along the Lehigh River. In 1995, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation stopped its steel-making operations in Bethlehem, closed the plant, and brought to an end a long history that shaped the livelihoods, family life, and blue-collar culture of thousands of Lehigh Valley residents. 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 pervious, 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. The project’s success is contributing to the sustainability of the campus’s tenants, spurring private development in abandoned buildings and sites adjacent to the campus, while also bolstering existing businesses in the surrounding neighborhood. What We Did: Architecture, Urban Design, Landscape Architecture
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Mariposa Park San Francisco, CA
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. The story of early use of the site as a railyard is told through the design of the plaza, paths, and shade structures. A trellis made of locally salvaged timbers and steel I-beams replicate the roundhouse tracks and turntable. Where spur lines once radiated, gabion segments filled with brick, concrete, and asphalt rubble collected from nearby building demolition – trace their paths. The gabions create a unifying language for perimeter markers, field game viewing platforms, and habitat for small fauna. Trimmed in wood, the gabions in the plaza become impromptu stages and seats. 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. What We Did: Landscape Architecture, Planning
PLANNING AND DESIGN
Adobe Lehi, UT
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
FringeArts Philadelphia, PA
WRT has received more than 350 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.
Noteworthy: 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.
COMMUNITY DESIGN
Blue Ball Dairy Barn Wilmington, DE
PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
Principal Riverwalk Des Moines, IA
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 PLANNING AND DESIGN
Adobe Lehi, UT
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 19103
478 Tehama Street, Suite 2B San Francisco, CA 94103
T: 215.732.5215 F: 215.732.2551
T: 415.575.4722 F: 215.732.2551
www.wrtdesign.com