Levitt Pavilion is moving closer to becoming reality in San Jose, providing the first phase of the city’s plan to revitalize and transform St. James Park. The Levitt Foundation partners with communities to transform underutilized spaces into destinations for people from all walks of life through free public concerts. If the project is completed, San Jose would be the eighth city in the country to have a Levitt Pavilion.

Ayers Saint Gross, Kevin Daly Architects, and CMG Landscape Architecture recently completed new housing for UC Berkeley graduate students to help meet pent up demand. xučyun ruwway Graduate Student Apartments has 286 units which can house a total 761 students. The architects took advantage of the Bay Area’s temperate climate by designing corridors semi-open to the elements.

A bold new neighborhood is taking shape near San Francisco’s Oracle Park baseball stadium. The 28-acre-mixed used waterfront development called Mission Rock will eventually have more than 1,000 apartments along with office space, commercial space, and an inventive pedestrian-first streetscape design. Integral to the neighborhood’s design are three recently opened outdoor installations that could reinvent what people expect from the city’s public realm. The installations—called “street rooms”—are miniature parklike features of the streetscape that are cementing Mission Rock’s case for being one of the most pedestrian-friendly urban spaces in America.

A new case study of Mission Creek Stormwater Park has been published to the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s award-winning Landscape Performance Series! This unique online database includes over 200 exemplary landscape projects with quantified environmental, social, and economic benefits. The impact of Mission Creek Stormwater Park was assessed and documented through LAF’s innovative Case Study Investigation (CSI) program, a unique research collaboration among faculty researchers, designers, and students.

Hillpoint Park is the primary Hunters Point public park – it is the promontory overlook to the shipyard waterfront open space system with a large, gently sloping lawn that creates an amphitheater-like environment to enjoy the views. CMG designed many custom and high-quality features into the public park, and several significant art installations are integrated within the park spaces to tell the story of the shipyard and community history.

The Garden Party by Min Design is a petite plein-air structure of curved white metal that takes after Victorian-era conservatories in form and program.

An entirely new neighborhood is taking shape at the edge of San Francisco Bay in the form of the massive Dogpatch Power Station redevelopment project. This sweeping, multiphase, master-planned development would bring office, residential and hotel uses, as well as a new waterfront park, to an area roughly bounded by 22nd Street, 23rd Street, Illinois Street and the Bay — a stretch of coastline that has not been publicly accessible for several generations.

Prefabricated modular campuses in Northern California are offering comforts that may help keep people off the streets — with pets, possessions and private space in mind.

The reinvention of the 425-acre island created in the 1930s out of rubble and sand to hold the Golden Gate International Exposition is a work in progress that likely will continue for decades. But the first phase is far enough along that if you’re curious about how urban landscapes emerge and mature, this is the summer to start taking notes.

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors recently approved the permanent closure of a significant portion of the Great Highway to car traffic. The move was necessitated by the erosion of our coast due to the climate crisis — making the area unsafe to continue serving as a roadway. CMG’s renderings for this transformation recently drew excitement from the local community and the city at large. They should inspire us to think of other spaces in San Francisco that we can reimagine for more productive uses.

The Oakland Alameda Adaptation Committee (OAAC) hosted a Zoom workshop on May 20 to discuss what sea level rise means for Alameda and Oakland, and to talk about tools to make our communities more resilient to the inevitable changes it is likely to bring.

Partner Willett Moss shares ecological vision for San Francisco Civic Center.

Partner Kevin Conger walks Treasure Island with CBS News Bay Area to discuss emerging landscape of the quickly developing San Francisco neighborhood that is reflecting the re-use mentality.

Associate Principal Corbett Belcher shares CMG’s carbon-reduction strategies on a recently completed Bay Area Tech Campus with Metropolis Magazine.

SF Chronicle’s John King toured Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island’s emerging public spaces with Partner Kevin Conger and Senior Associate Will Benge. They explore the ecological infrastructure integrated into the new dog park, accessible trails, and open spaces.

Alameda’s City Council approved moving forward with a plan to remove Building 25 to make way for a park that will welcome sea level rise. The decision was the latest step in the process of developing a Master Plan that will provide the foundation for receiving a multitude of regulatory permits and construction grant funds.

An op-ed written by CMG co-founder and partner, Willett Moss. Civic Center should be a people-first, democratic public space, a civic destination that serves all city residents and evokes civic pride. It should be a place to linger, providing essential park space, ample seating, clean restrooms, connection to nature and amenities for the local, historically underserved communities.

Alamedans have a chance to watch incredible dancers at work next week when they rehearse on the metal girders at the Eastern end of Building 25. This is the start of a new collaboration between the Artistic Director of Oakland’s BANDALOOP, Melecio Estrella, and Alameda choreographer, Tara Pilbrow, culminating in a series performance in fall 2024 called “Re-Cycle” that will be held at the future site of De-Pave Park.

More companies are eschewing manicured grass in favor of native plants, a shift driven by the environmental costs of installing and maintaining lawns.

St. James Park, located on nearly seven acres in the downtown core, is getting a complete makeover through a partnership between Levitt Foundation, Friends of Levitt Pavilion San Jose and the city. The park has struggled with blight, crime and homelessness for decades, and city officials and advocates see this revamp as the catalyst to revitalizing a neglected section of downtown.

College of the Desert reached a new milestone in its long-awaited Palm Springs campus. On Wednesday, June 14, the College wrapped up its schematic design phase. It was the fourth public meeting of the project management team charged with expediting the completion of the schematic design plans for the campus.

A proposal for a nearly half-million life science development in Burlingame was met with approval by the City’s Planning Commission during the board’s most recent meeting. The board voted in favor of the project, which consists of two buildings that could accommodate 483,380 square feet of both life science and office uses.

The long-in-development revamp of St. James Park in Downtown San Jose is out with a new set of images and a video illustrating how the park could look in a few years.

Community engagement experts offer tested approaches that prevent tokenism, create trust, and foster a sense of belonging.

The East Cut Sports and Dog Park will be a new public open space in the East Cut neighborhood of downtown San Francisco—a major bike and pedestrian thoroughfare, packed with amenities and active programing.

The East Cut CBD is looking to meet its next fundraising milestone by raising $200,000 by the end of June 2023 to make the park a reality by 2027.

CMG Senior Associate Doug Jones joined Drawn to Scale Podcast with host Pablo Cortez, PLA, to discuss CMG’s work and approach to public realm projects and community engagement.⁠

Buckeye Grove, and its four acres of storm drains and newly planted native plants, is known as a bioswale, more commonly known as a storm drain garden. It’s a simple concept — rainwater flows into several storm basins which then funnels it through plants and dirt, filtering out contaminants such as car oil and heavy metals.

Waves from San Francisco Bay now regularly breach the pier and spill into the streets during tidal surges and helped convince city officials that sea level rise caused by climate change is no longer a problem that can be ignored.

When San Francisco’s new Southeast Community Center opened in October, the three acres of parkland included an expansive landscaped bioswale that, in theory, would handle the water running off even the most extensive storm. Less than a month later, the theory was put to the test — and it passed with flying colors.

At Nueva School’s pre-K through 8th-grade campus, in Hillsborough, California, even the buildings are fodder for learning. Most recently, students have been analyzing the sustainability strategies of the new Science and Environmental Center (SEC).

Pamela Conrad, an Architecture 2030 senior fellow and principal with CMG Landscape Architecture in San Francisco, explains why architects must focus sustainability efforts on the outdoor realm and exterior built environment.

Two dozen parks or playgrounds have opened since 2020, including the Mission Creek Stormwater Park and Willie “Woo Woo” Wong Playground.

San Francisco is embarking on a more expensive, almost existential task: planning how to prepare the city’s bay shoreline for as much as seven feet of sea level rise.

Principal Pamela Conrad chats with Time for Kids about a career in landscape architecture and protecting the planet for their new career-education website for kids ages 8-14.

Principal Pamela Conrad, ASLA, has been named chair of the ASLA Climate Action Plan Task Force.

The challenges of climate change are everywhere but maybe no more so than in coastal cities that face dual threats of seismic activity and rising seas.

Some public parks want you to feel like you’re in a place apart from your surroundings. The joyously intricate transformation of Chinatown’s Willie “Woo Woo” Wong Playground, by contrast, plunges you right in.

Treasure Island’s past, the plan for its future, and an update on the grand vision.

With the expansion and refurbishment of Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, the landscape and buildings are designed to increase community connectivity, provide public access, create plant and wildlife habitats, and to reflect the culture of the business.

When designers need to calculate the environmental cost of projects, a new tech tool crunches the numbers.

A Q&A with landscape architect Willett Moss.