Sasaki | Portfolio

Select a Project Type:

Select a Service:

Select a Region:

Southworks Landscape Architecture and Stormwater Strategies

The Southworks Master Plan creates a 25-year vision for 573 acres of former industrial land along Lake Michigan. Previously utilized as a U.S. Steel manufacturing plant that employed over 20,000 people, the site will be transformed into a high-density, mixed-use community of over 30,000 residents.

Sasaki’s plan, done in collaboration with SOM, calls for a sustainable lakefront community with a mix of uses, a street network that extends the neighborhood grid, proximity to transit, generous public spaces, and a new lakefront park. As a pilot project for the new LEED-ND program, Southworks is slated to meet silver certification or higher.

798 Arts District Vision Plan

Sasaki's 798 Vision Plan seeks to regenerate the area as a high quality, mixed use district with a distinct focus on the arts. Planning and design principles included emphasizing the arts as a central theme for the district, retaining the essential qualities of the historic industrial aesthetic, developing strategies which make the district more visible, and encouraging a wide variety of arts-related and other complementary uses.

Drexel University Wellness Center

The Drexel campus straddles both sides of Market Street in Philadelphia’s University City section. Sasaki's addition to the 1960s-era athletic complex, the Daskalasis Athletic Center (DAC), accomplishes several institutional and programmatic goals: it increases the university’s visual presence along Market Street, integrates existing and new buildings into a unified complex, and groups all of the recreation facilities into a new building wing. Respecting that the DAC is surrounded by one of Drexel’s few outdoor landscape spaces, the design also maximizes preservation of the site’s open space.

The Presidio Trust Management Plan and Base Re-use

Sasaki provided implementation planning for the area within the Presidio Trust's jurisdiction of the Presidio in San Francisco. Overall objectives are to explore alternative programmatic and physical plan concepts for the use of existing and proposed buildings, related site developments, linkages and critical orientations to adjoining areas in the park.

Caohai North Shore New Urban District

Sasaki and client Shui On applied sustainable principles to the planning and design of the complex project on 485 hectares. The plan integrates native vegetation and open space with an environmentally responsive transportation infrastructure connected to the city and region's existing roadways. It dedicates about 87 hectares of the total site to a mix of high, medium, and low-density housing and about 29 hectares to cultural facilities such as museums, theaters, an amphitheater, and an artists' community.

Cedar Rapids River Corridor Redevelopment Plan

2008 was crowned “The Year of the River” in Cedar Rapids, Iowa - a title that became more significant following the catastrophic flood in June 2008 that inundated the river-edge neighborhoods and a large part of downtown. Over the four months following the flood, Sasaki worked closely with city representatives, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, stakeholders, and a team of planners, engineers, and designers to develop the framework plan. The public process included a series of open houses where the community could view and provide feedback on alternatives for flood management, housing and transportation.

Innovista Master Plan

Columbia, South Carolina is a medium-size river city that is both the state capital and host city for the main campus of the University of South Carolina. Sasaki was hired to create a master plan for the area between the university and the riverfront, at present a largely undeveloped area with a sharp 80-foot drop-off in topography and dramatic views. Spanning a roughly 500-acre district, the plan's aim is to transform this under-used precinct into vibrant urban district that combines university research facilities, low- and mid-rise residential and parkland along the Congaree River.

East Baltimore Neighborhood Plan

Baltimore has experienced an urban renaissance in recent years. Many of Baltimore’s historic rowhouse neighborhoods have, however, continued to suffer from abandonment and disinvestment. It is hoped that plans to redevelop a new Life Sciences district next to the Johns Hopkins Medical Center will contribute to the neighborhood’s regeneration and break down existing barriers between the medical campus and the surrounding neighborhoods. The East Baltimore Neighborhood Plan is founded on three pillars of sustainability: social, economic, and environmental.

Auraria Higher Education Center Campus Master Plan Update

The Auraria Higher Education Center (AHEC) in downtown Denver was founded in 1970 to serve the needs of three institutions by grouping them together (University of Colorado at Denver Health Sciences Center, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver). Sasaki’s master plan update builds on the idea of giving each of the institutions its own distinct quarter within AHEC providing each school an identifiable home within the campus.

Charleston Waterfront Park

This seven acre park along the Cooper River includes a 1,200 foot promenade, wharf, shade structure with swings and fishing pier, participatory fountains, lawns and seating walls, and intimate gardens under a grove of live oak. Sasaki used state-of-the-art engineering techniques to stabilize the landfill site; restoration of the salt marsh protected the river’s marine ecology.

Regeneration/Reuse
The regeneration and reuse of campus, urban, and suburban places is one of our most exciting areas of practice. Three distinct areas exemplify this practice; underutilized urban and campus building districts, former industrial buildings and brownfield sites, and suburban “greyfields” such as former shopping centers, office parks, and residential subdivisions. These sites offer the potential regeneration of buildings, streets, and utility infrastructure. The reuse of these elements presents great potential for achieving an ecological and sustainable vision by the nature of reusing disturbed land versus consumption of rural farmland and forest. The advantage of location, typical of these sites, is valuable in the competitive real estate marketplace.

In linking old with new, the resultant architecture and space often is more efficient, more diverse, and more dynamic; qualities emblematic of the world’s most enduring places.