Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates’ Post

Join us on Saturday, June 15th for a day in Brooklyn Bridge Park to celebrate MVVA’s new monograph! We will be meeting at the Pier 3 Greenway Terrace at 11:00, where there will be signed books for sale by Head Hi and bites courtesy of Fornino and La Newyorkina MVVA partners Michael Van Valkenburgh, Matthew Urbanski, and Gullivar Shepard will lead free tours to discuss the design process behind key moments in the landscape, while Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation horticulturalists Rashid Poulson and Evelyn Manlove will share an inside look at the stewardship practices that sustain the park’s 85 acres. This event is FREE and open to the public. Please sign up for a tour at the link below. https://lnkd.in/eWyzu6hF

After two years of construction, the 26-acre Commons at Hermann Park in Houston opened to the public last month with a ribbon cutting at the restored Wortham Pavilion. The Commons was designed by MVVA as one of three projects funded by the Hermann Park Conservancy’s $56 million Play Your Park campaign. The Commons reinvigorates an underutilized corner of the Park and creates a more inviting gateway and asset for the community. Once a flat, open area dominated by busy roads and its boundary with the Zoo, the Commons embeds a range of activity in a lush and varied landscape oriented inward toward its rolling central lawn. The anchor of the project is a two-acre destination Play Garden, which invites adventurous exploration with engaging sensory play to create a wide variety of accessible play spaces for children of all ages, including equipment designed by Richter Spielgerate and Monstrum. The Commons is just the beginning of MVVA’s, and the Conservancy's 20-year Master Plan commissioned in 2015. The master plan aims to stitch the fragmented Park’s 445 acres back together and reinvent its underutilized areas to better welcome Houstonians. 

We are honored to share that Brooklyn Botanic Garden has received the @asla_ny 2024 Award of Excellence. Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is a historic community resource located at the center of Brooklyn that is driven by its mission for growth—in horticultural practices, climate adaptation, and visitor experience. A suite of recent projects has expanded ecology and horticulture programming for children, improved the garden’s accessibility, and reduced the site’s reliance on freshwater while easing the burden on the city’s aging stormwater infrastructure. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/eXTAJDbi Photography by: Lexi Van Valkenburgh Alex MacLean Liz Ligon

In honor of World Water Day, we are highlighting the enormous transformation of the Don River’s mouth at Toronto’s Port Lands. The project reached a major milestone in February when the constructed one-kilometer river valley was filled with water up to the same elevation as Lake Ontario. Both ends remain plugged in order to give the aquatic plants time to adapt before allowing water to freely flow through the waterway. The value of access to public waterfronts and restoring water systems compatible with nature is at the core of what we do, and it has been our privilege to improve the safety and quality of life for the people of Toronto and to enable the growth of a new, sustainable urban district with a living, working landscape at its heart. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/egFQ5DHx