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Willett Moss PLA, FAAR, FASLA

Founding Principal

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Willett is a Founding Partner of CMG Landscape Architecture and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. His work reflects his range of interests with a consistent focus on landscapes of broad value and public appeal.

His project experience includes community-based design, sustainable urban systems, planning rooted in ecological understanding, and making historic resources relevant today. For Willett, good public spaces have clear purpose, whether symbolic or utilitarian, and contribute to community identity as memorable additions to the landscape. Willett leads CMG’s largest urban design and campus planning efforts at the firm, including San Francisco Civic Center Vision Plan and UC Berkeley Lower Sproul Plaza.

Willett is dedicated to serving the landscape profession through teaching the next generation of designers, lecturing on a variety of issues and topics, and providing mentorship of his team. In the past, he has enjoyed creating art and research focused on the intersection of public landscape, bodily experience, and collective memory. Willett holds a Masters in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from the University of Massachusetts.

Awards

California Preservation Foundation, Board Member

American Academy in Rome Fellowship

Janet Darling Webel Prize

Harvard Community Service Fellowship

Selected Projects

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Civic Center Public Space Design

parks/public space

Civic Center is at the heart of San Francisco’s democracy – a vital open space for the city’s highest-density neighborhoods and a national historic landmark. After decades of neglect and failed revitalization attempts, a new vision is developed through a community-based process bringing together 75 institutions and community groups, thousands of city residents and workers, and governmental stakeholders to reimagine what contemporary democratic public space could be. The Civic Center Public Space Design transforms the historic district into thriving social infrastructure, prioritizing public life and local needs.
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Mission Creek Stormwater Park

parks/public space

Mission Creek Stormwater Park is a leading example of green infrastructure, with a focus on urban stormwater treatment in bioswales and bioretention basins, shoreline stabilization, and ecology. The multi-use promenade serves as a dedicated pedestrian and bike entrance to the new Mission Bay neighborhood in San Francisco. Set along Mission Creek, the waterfront experience is met with unmatched views of San Francisco Bay, the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark, and Twin Peaks.
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Stanford Computing + Data Science Building

campus

Positioned at the historic heart of campus, the Computing and Data Science Building (CoDa) is designed to promote collaboration and innovation. A series of social spaces encourage people to gather and linger, while allowing for the heavy pedestrian and bicycle circulation of a campus environment.
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Tilden Environmental Education Center

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Amongst the 740-acre Tilden Nature Area, just north of Berkeley, sits the Environmental Education Center (EEC) – a beloved visitor’s center and museum that has educated generations of visitors about the diverse ecologies of the Tilden Nature Area and the surrounding East Bay Regional Park District. This opportunity to connect people to nature should start at the moment of arrival with the new landscape creating a welcoming experience that highlights and interprets the native plants, animals, and cultural histories of the park along a new network of accessible paths and trails.
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University of California San Francisco 4th Street Plaza

campus

The design for 4th Street Plaza merges a city street with a public plaza and park to transform a block into a public amenity and neighborhood open space destination. The plan reconciles complex circulation and multiple programs to present a plaza that is welcoming, legible, and civic minded.
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Flood Park

parks/public space

Building on the collaborative engagement effort for Realize Flood Park, the revitalized landscape and park amenity improvements bring together a new unified vision that meets the ecological and social needs of the San Mateo community. Flood Park restores this neighborhood open space asset with a light and respectful design touch – preserving urban ecology through historical tree preservation, introducing new successional tree planting and grasslands, while creating new recreational and social programming.
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Sunnylands Retreat

campus

CMG collaborated with the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands for a decade to transform the historic estate into a Camp David of the West. Many projects were undertaken, beginning with the adaptive reuse of employee housing as the Cottages Retreat, a campus for VIP convocation, and culminating with construction of the Administration Campus, a place for community interaction that manifests Sunnylands’ identity and legacy.
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St. James Park

parks/public space

St. James Park transforms an existing city park into a world-class urban square that accommodates and supports a wide variety of interests and activities. This public open space unifies the future with the past and creates a destination at the center of a city – positioning itself for the future.