With funding from NOAA and NY Sea Grant, the City of Rochester and Monroe County worked together to develop the Green Infrastructure Retrofit Manual. Because new construction is governed by state mandated stormwater design standards, this project concentrates on the opportunities for including GI practices in retrofits and redevelopment projects.

As part of the Willert Park Green Infrastructure Project, the Buffalo Sewer Authority wished to provide a greater community outreach program with the intent of engaging and educating the neighborhood youth about Green Infrastructure projects. That engagement became “Water WORX”, an 8-part stormwater summer camp, created and presented to the Willert Park neighborhood youth.

Once the home of thriving industries, today the riverfront serves as the foundation of natural beauty, recreation, access, and opportunity. ROC the Riverway builds upon the success of recent investments in Downtown Rochester and represents decades of bold and progressive ideas, brought forth through a community driven process to provide visual and physical access to the river.

For years the most prominent site in Troy, NY has sat vacant. A hole in the ground marred in controversy and disappointment as redevelopment attempts have failed. Key to past failures was the lack of community involvement. A new approach focuses on creating "a place for the People of Troy."

Washington Square is one of the oldest public spaces in the City of Rochester. It is the site of a range of monuments and has long served as the staging ground for community activism. The Washington Square Park Community Association hired [the firm] to assist in reimagining the square through a community-based process. The result is a design plan that is sensitive to the cultural history and engages with the 21st century city.

Grace Plaza is located at the University at Buffalo’s North Campus. The project goals were to investigate and analyze the poor performance of existing stormwater practices and to ultimately redesign the site, improving the function of the green infrastructure practices while also creating a dynamic greenspace to support students and faculty. The result was a re-imagining of the engineering district to create the first green “quad” on campus.

From the start, the Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo had ambitious plans to weave biophilic design throughout its new state-of-the-art facility. The centerpiece of this effort is The Winter Garden, an interior garden in a double height space at the southeast corner of the building. The Winter Garden is an oasis of sunlight and uplifting nature experience that supports patients, families and staff throughout all four seasons.

The vision for the recently completed 3,000 SF rooftop garden terrace at Roswell Park Cancer Institute is that guests will have access to this respite between clinical appointments and that the space will be made comfortable, memorable, and reflective by the design and amenities.

Connecting park and city, Gateway Plaza presents Schenectady as a sustainable, innovative and charismatic destination. A catalyst for activation of Schenectady’s new artisan district, the park is designed to support public events, promote community recreation and inspire public art. The park is organized around two strong cross-axes that join at the location of three corTen steel sculptures that celebrate Schenectady’s past, present and future.

Brighton, NY has embraced a merger of multi-modal transportation with green infrastructure technologies as a valid strategy for guiding redevelopment along Monroe Avenue. Above and beyond meeting water quality and quantity metrics, green infrastructure systems are redefining the corridor and providing a strong return on investment for the community.

Lauded as a modern engineering accomplishment, the 1950’s saw the completion of a trenched highway to speed motorists out of the central city. Dubbed the Inner Loop, time has proven this grade-separated expressway disruptive to the social fabric of the City. To foster a more vibrant community and reconnect neighborhoods, the City of Rochester is effectively burying the 20th-century nod to the Automobile by filling in a 4,500 linear foot section.

Richard S. Hawks, FASLA

Public Practice

Mark Mistretta, RLA, ASLA

 New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation    

Private Practice

Peter Osborne, RLA, ASLA  

Appel Osborne Landscape Architecture

Academic Practice

Anne C Godfrey, RLA, ASLA

SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry

 Lois Nguyen

Cornell University

Winter Garden at Oishei Children’s Hospital

Joy Kuebler Landscape Architect, PC