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Designing for community health

Active design and recreation opportunities encourage a healthy population. We design parks and open spaces to flexibly accommodate a range of activities from team sports and group gatherings, to tranquil enjoyment or for children at play. Our experts are not only dedicated to park and athletic facility design, but also eco-system design, and environmental preservation. By re-creating or restoring environments and habitats for endangered species, we design responsibly.

Passion, creativity, and solid design—above all else. That is my goal and what our project teams strive to provide.

Chris Jennings Senior Principal, Discipline Leader, Community Development, (Landscape Architecture)

East Midtown Greenway

The East Midtown Greenway is getting New York City one step closer to a completed greenway loop around Manhattan. The project will add 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) of park space, walkway, and bikeway on an in-water structure in the East River.

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Cameron:            This skate park is named after The Station, a measly little gas station off of Chimney Rock in West Belfort.

Justin:                   That's where we all learned our basic tricks and, more importantly, where we met each other. But then the gas station was torn down, so at 15 years old, me and my friends put our heads together, put our ideas together, and decided to build a skate park.

Cameron:            We started going to meetings, we started calling and e-mailing so many people asking for money.

Kanten:                And our design team met with all the locals in the community here to talk about whether they actually wanted in the skate park, and after shredding with them and getting some ideas and putting it on paper, we came up with the layout we have.

                                The goal was to put something in here that was for everybody, whether it was transition in the bowl, quarter pipes, banks, hips, rails, it was really what we were trying to do with the design.

Justin:                   And now I'm able to stand here, starting at 15 years old as a kid, just skating at [Manning Gas Station 00:01:03] with my friends. And now, 19 years old, not a kid anymore, and I'm standing here at a skate park that we built together.

Cameron:            My favorite thing about skateboarding is getting on my board and skating anywhere and anytime. Just pushing down the street, just cruising. I just love that feeling of wind in my hair, having fun.

Andrew:              Skateboarding, for me, has a very individualistic approach. For instance, when I was a kid, I was never good in soccer, basketball ... That was mainly because I had to rely on other people.

                                Skateboarding's all about individual achievement, and that really pushes me to do the best that I can do and that I want to do.

Justin:                   Seeing your friends, seeing yourself, seeing everybody around you progress, that is the coolest part about skateboarding.

Max:                      When you're skateboarding, you can be trying a trick for five minutes or five hours, and when you finally land that trick, it's one of the best feelings in the world.

Juan:                     I skate to fall, really. It's like, just to do that and to get back up and do it again.

Brendon:             We put in a lot of hard work and time from the community and we finally have our park.

Juan:                     It's amazing, really. I never thought it would come true. It's like a dream of every skater.

Andrew:              Park is pretty sick because it's right down the street from my house.

Dan:                       And it turned out super good. The transitions, the angles, everything flows. I'm really happy with it.

Kanten:                It was just really an idea that came to life from them. It's really a community project and we were just there to help them.

Sylvester:            If you dream of something and you want something, you can grab it and you can make it happen.

Annise:                 This park is designed for this neighborhood and this community, and it is exactly what this neighborhood and this community asked for. Very, very important.

Cameron:            And I wish that this would inspire anybody else to continue what we just did and spread the love of skateboarding.

Justin:                   This skate park being a concrete skate park is amazing because it's here permanently. It's not going anywhere, so it's gonna be here for generations. I'm gonna be able to skate in it, my kids are gonna be able to skate it, and my grandkids will even get to skate it.

                                I think that this community has a lot of positivity flowing through it just through this skate park.

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Community Development We create communities by planning, developing, designing, and implementing the infrastructure needed to sustain their growth.
Landscape Architecture Whether it's an urban park, a restored wetland, an athletic complex, or a waterfront destination--through analysis, planning, and design, we create inspired landscapes that reflect context and user needs.
Architecture We create spaces that are engaging and uplifting, that contribute to our collective sense of health and well-being, and encourage the sustainable stewardship of our communities.
Buildings Engineering With decades of innovation and experience under our belts we’re engineering a promising future leveraging the best in building systems, technology, energy analysis, and sustainable performance.
Interior Design As humans, we spend a significant portion of our daily lives inside. We believe our emotional and physical well-being is dramatically impacted by the places where we live, work, and play.
Public Participation We develop and execute communication and consultation plans that allow people affected by change to understand, influence, and accept it.
Design Visualization Through design visualization, we help clients and stakeholders picture the building they’ll work in, the bridge they’ll drive over, and the neighborhood their kids will play in.
Urban Planning & Design Our plans help harness the forces reshaping North American communities. We create places that are authentic, green, walkable, connected and diverse.  

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