Built Environment Plus Highlights Restorative, Inclusive Design at UMass Boston’s New Harborwalk
Sasaki landscape architect Ian Scherling leading a tour for Built Environment Plus
Built Environment Plus (formerly USGBC Massachusetts Chapter) recently hosted a bicycle tour of Boston, highlighting important projects along Boston’s Harborwalk that promote ecological and human health, resilience, and placemaking. The bicycle tour began at Sasaki’s University of Massachusetts (UMass) Boston Harborwalk Park. Sasaki landscape architect Ian Scherling, ASLA presented the 77-acre landscape project to the group.
Completed in 2019, UMass Boston Harborwalk park boldly reimagines the campus landscape, celebrating the campus’ unique and breathtaking setting at the edge of Boston Harbor. Sasaki’s design for the project promotes alternative modes of transportation and ushers in a new inclusively-designed future for the campus. The design creates over five miles of new, barrier-free walkways that connect the campus to the Boston Harborwalk.
The University of Massachusetts Boston is sited on Columbia Point Peninsula, surrounded by ocean waters. The new harborwalk design opens up the inward-facing campus to take advantage of its beautiful setting.
The design also realigns new streets, walkways, and transit stops around the campus, connecting the resilient and sustainable open spaces on campus. Three feet of new engineered soil was imported as part of the project, providing a healthy and robust foundation for 14-acres of new native meadow along the waterfront edge. Inspired by natural Massachusetts coastlines, the edge landscape is transformed, sculpted into dunes and basins that collect stormwater and provide an ecological habitat for species of native meadows, birds, and insects all atop a former landfill.
The park has 852 new trees and a diverse set of new open spaces for use by the campus community and the public. Small pocket lawns are set in within the continuous meadows to create opportunities for outdoor education and respite while a 2.2-acre Commencement Lawn acts as the park’s centerpiece.
Designed as a setting to support academics, recreation, events of various sizes, and everyday campus life, the Commencement Lawn celebrates UMass Boston’s connection to its unrivaled campus setting. UMass Boston hosted its 2020 commencement ceremony on the new Commencement Lawn.
Before: When UMass Boston opened in 1974, the campus’s open space consisted of a plaza atop a two-story parking garage. The 77-acre UMass Boston Harborwalk Park transforms a campus sitting on a former landfill into a functioning and expressive ecological landscape.
After: The Harborwalk Park creates a lush new coastal landscape that contributes to the City of Boston’s 28-mile long Harborwalk path.
