Central Wharf Plaza

We designed Central Wharf Plaza to fulfill two essential urban roles: reconnecting pedestrian activity from downtown to the harbor while also providing a comfortable but not isolated respite from its busy surroundings. Working with city agencies, the team expanded the site to provide identity and spatial coherence. To support its twenty-six mature oak trees, the design makes use of innovations in paving, drainage, soils, and other subterranean infrastructure. The above-ground scheme was conceived as a simple arcing gesture that accommodates strong diagonal movement through the site, emphasized by granite walls, planted steel screens, and a wood and steel arbor. The 2% slope of the plaza surface produces elevated views toward the water and a stepped gathering place at the active harbor edge. A constellation of LED lights hung from catenary wires threaded though the tree canopy casts an efficient, subtle, and festive quality of light within the tree-filled space and extends the useful hours of the plaza.

Part of what was once the busiest commercial port in North America, Boston’s Central Wharf became a 4,000 sf parking lot in the second half of the twentieth century, severed from the city by the highway known as the Central Artery. The Big Dig and the creation of the Rose Kennedy Greenway released this site to the possibility of renewed urban life. Central Wharf’s new owner, a private philanthropy dedicated to supporting urban open space initiatives, seized on our motivations for developing and applying exemplary, high performance urban planting practices to revive this space as a vibrant civic plaza.

The Power of Trees 

Metropolitan legacies arise around sustained city trees—Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue, Washington’s National Mall, Chicago’s Grant Park, Savannah’s historic squares. Below-grade infrastructure, a prerequisite for these cherished urban environments, is often overlooked. In pursuit of summer shade and pedestrian connectivity, this small new plaza in Boston’s historic waterfront sustains a dense grove of mature oak trees, modeling an elegant solution to challenging conditions.

Fifteen years after construction, we remain advisors to the owners, who meticulously monitor and maintain the innovative soils and paving systems we developed for this specific site and condition. Central Wharf is a signal case study in the independent research we continue to undertake evaluating alternative approaches to growing healthy trees in tough urban environments. This peer-reviewed and award wining research continues to inform our urban planting work.

Seeing the Trees

Each year, Central Wharf is reconceived as a venue for site-specific public art. Often designed to in dialogue with the rich canopy of trees, these works, commissioned by the owner, activate the site and encourage people to see the site anew each year.