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It’s surprising how quickly a city can adapt to its own compromises. What begins as a temporary solution slowly becomes part of the background. People stop noticing the road between them and the water. The neglected edge of the city becomes invisible. Crossing a bridge becomes something to rush through instead of enjoying.
Before long, it’s hard to imagine those places ever being any different. The A+Award-winning projects below begin with landscapes like these. Rather than looking for an empty site to build on, they return to places that had fallen out of everyday life and give people a reason to experience them differently.
Seattle Waterfront Park
By Field Operations, Seattle, Washington
Popular Choice Winner, Urban & Masterplans, 14th Annual A+Awards
For much of the last century, Seattle’s waterfront existed just out of reach. An elevated highway carried traffic along the shoreline, but it also severed the city from Elliott Bay, reducing one of its defining landscapes to something glimpsed in passing. Waterfront Park grew from a simple question: what happens when that barrier disappears?
The answer stretches across 26 blocks, where walking routes, beaches, gardens and restored habitat now draw people back to the water’s edge. The project also repairs ecological systems, filters stormwater and celebrates Indigenous history, showing how a single piece of infrastructure can shape a city’s relationship with its landscape long after the cars are gone.
Charles River Island
By Paul Lukez Architecture, Massachusetts
Popular Choice Winner, 14th Annual A+Awards, Unbuilt Landscape
While still on the drawing board, Charles River Island offers a compelling vision for the future of the Charles River Basin between Boston and Cambridge. The proposal replaces the existing Massachusetts Avenue Bridge with a crossing that pauses at its midpoint, where a public island filled with gardens, pathways and cultural spaces creates an entirely new destination on the water. Raising the bridge would also improve conditions below by allowing more light into the Basin and providing greater clearance for rowing and boating. Rather than treating infrastructure as something to move through as quickly as possible, the proposal imagines it as a place people might choose to spend time.
Ecoparque: Ciénaga De Mallorquín
DEB ARCHITECTURE and EL EQUIPO MAZZANTI, Barranquilla, Colombia
Jury Winner, 14th Annual A+Awards, Urban & Masterplans
For years, Barranquilla’s most biodiverse landscape sat at the city’s edge, shaped by decades of environmental degradation and unchecked urban expansion. EcoParque: Ciénaga de Mallorquín starts from the idea that protecting a wetland doesn’t have to mean keeping people away from it. Instead, a network of paths and public spaces forms a carefully considered threshold between the city and the mangroves, allowing both to coexist without one overwhelming the other. The park creates places for walking, gathering, and artisanal fishing while giving the ecosystem room to recover. In doing so, it shifts the city’s relationship with one of its defining natural landscapes from neglect to stewardship.
Jiangyin Xicheng Canal Parks
By Brearley Architects and Urbanists, Jiangyin, Wuxi, China
Special Mention, Public Parks & Green Spaces, 14th Annual A+Awards
Instead of relying on a single park to do everything, Jiangyin Xicheng Canal Parks splits the job into two. Stretching along four kilometers of the Xicheng Canal, one side is devoted to restoring native ecosystems, while the other becomes a series of 101 flexible public spaces designed for everyday life. Set on remediated industrial land, the project helps reshape the canal from a polluted edge into the center of a growing neighborhood, proving that ecological restoration can be just as important to city-making as new buildings.
Downtown Cary Park
By OJB Landscape Architecture, Cary, North Carolina
Popular Choice Winner, Public Parks & Green Spaces, 14th Annual A+Awards
Downtown Cary Park began with an empty stretch of land that had been assembled piece by piece over nearly two decades. Rather than filling it with a single attraction, the design turns seven acres into a series of connected outdoor rooms that encourage people to linger, whether they’re attending a concert, walking through native gardens, or simply finding a quiet place to sit. Elevated walkways and water features make use of the site’s changing topography while also addressing long-standing flooding issues through rain gardens and natural stormwater systems. Since opening, the park has become a catalyst for downtown life, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors while proving that ecological performance and everyday public space can comfortably share the same ground.
Presidio Tunnel Tops
By Field Operations, San Francisco, California
Finalist, Public Parks & Greenspaces, 14th Architizer A+Awards
The Presidio has long been one of San Francisco’s defining landscapes, yet for decades a highway stood between its historic core and the Bay. Presidio Tunnel Tops begins by removing that obstacle, opening six hectares of land for public life. New walking routes, overlooks, meadows, and gathering spaces reveal just how much potential had been hidden beneath the infrastructure. At the same time, native planting, restored habitat, and reclaimed materials strengthen the site’s ecological health while creating spaces for play, learning, and everyday use. Looking at the project today, it’s hard not to wonder how different the Presidio might have felt had that connection never been interrupted in the first place.
The jury is deliberating... stay tuned for the winners of Architizer's A+Product Awards! Register for the A+Product Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.
