Agency is collaborating with Harvard Real Estate to design a new playscape that will extend the community greenway and connect Allston’s primary civic space at the Honan-Allston Public Library east, through future development parcels, towards the Charles River. A core commitment in Harvard’s 2021 Enterprise Research Campus Framework Plan, the greenway is imagined as a series of programmatic “rooms,” providing varied opportunities for active and passive recreation. When it opens in 2025, the playscape will be the second of four greenway rooms intended to offer an inclusive, resilient, comfortable, connected, and active public realm to the Allston neighborhood.
The one-acre parcel in Allston is currently an entirely paved and flat site at the junction of a residential neighborhood, Harvard’s investments in new engineering facilities, and former industrial land imagined as future mixed-use developments. A deep and playful community engagement process throughout the summer of 2023 revealed key goals for the project: to create an inclusive, active, and multigenerational community gathering place; to reflect the unique character of Allston; and to showcase ecological and stormwater resilience. Allston neighbors young and old shared a vision for a playful and quirky landscape where a picnic or game of chess with a friend could be punctuated by shrieks of delight from children discovering different aspects of the playscape, challenging themselves on artful sculptures, and exploring sensory features.
Agency is leading a robust and collaborative team in the work, including Arup, Earthscapes, Abundant Play, HLB Lighting, Irrigation Consultants Inc, Pine and Swallow, Roll Barresi & Associates, and CHA.
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