PWP Landscape Architecture, Foster + Partners, and Civitas are committed to a seamless integration of architecture, landscape, and urban design that will respect the Eero Saarinen- and Dan Kiley-designed Arch and grounds while re-imagining the visitor experience, re-engaging the memorial with its natural and built environment, and elevating the meaning and performance of the landscape. Our team includes specialists and experts who combine skill, local knowledge, and a deep understanding of history.
We will approach the competition as a research project, investigating the many natural and cultural layers of the site as an artifact, as a place, and as a memorial. Each of us brings a unique perspective to this investigation, but we share a commitment to derive a sophisticated design solution from a thorough understanding of the site, a solution that will respect history while expanding possibilities for the future.
PWP Landscape Architecture has long challenged traditional concepts of design through an exploration of the relationship between art and culture. As exhibited through such award-winning projects as the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, the work results from knowledge of history and tradition, sympathy with contemporary needs, understanding of both conceptual and material processes, mastery of construction, and attention to detail. At the National September 11th Memorial in New York, PWP has incorporated the intensive visitor demands of the eagerly anticipated monument into the design of a robust new park space for Lower Manhattan.
Foster + Partners has established a strong reputation for architectural achievements worldwide. In conceiving and executing interventions within such historic sites and institutions as Trafalgar Square, the Reichstag, the British Museum, and Project Honor in Racine, Wisconsin, among others, Foster + Partners has a proven ability to reinvigorate environments through limited, deft means.
Civitas is well-known for pioneering approaches to urban redevelopment throughout the country. In the firm’s work planning for the Great Rivers Greenway District and the Washington University Medical Center and strategizing the regeneration of St. Louis’s NorthSide, Civitas brings expansive thinking and creative understanding of the physical, political, and economic context of St. Louis.
The PWP, Foster, Civitas team also brings the sustainable-site-systems and structural-engineering prowess of Buro Happold, the graphic artistry of 2×4, Inc., the venue-programming intelligence of Lord Cultural Resources, and the public-art experience of Ned Kahn Studios, along with the skills of many other talented experts. In St. Louis, the team includes Mackey Mitchell Architects, Cole & Associates Civil Engineers, Vector Communications, Washington University Professor Dorothée Imbert, CBB Transportation Engineers, M3 Engineering Group, and Code Consultants, Inc.
