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When it opened in 1968, Boston City Hall drew praise as a brutalist icon, but its surrounding 7-acre plaza faced public criticism. Modeled after Siena’s Piazza del Campo, its expansive brick surfaces served as Boston’s place for large gatherings, but the vast, impervious space lacked human scale, everyday amenities, and included significant mobility barriers. A robust community engagement process informed ideas and public feedback defined the design principles to create a welcoming and civic front yard, a model for sustainability and resilience, a renewed cultural and architectural legacy, and a flexible and accommodating event venue. The design modernized the historic plaza while honoring its original intentions as Boston’s place to gather, celebrate, and make residents’ voices heard.
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The redesigned Boston City Hall Plaza creates a stronger relationship with its urban surroundings by transforming a hardscaped civic expanse into a porous, green, and human-scaled public space. Through layered planting, accessible materials, and welcoming edges, the design reconnects the plaza to surrounding streets, neighborhoods, and the larger civic fabric of downtown. It shifts the plaza from a symbol of institutional detachment to an open, inviting extension of the city’s public life. Formerly inaccessible due to stepped elevation change, Hanover Walk connects Congress and Cambridge Streets and reconciles the 26-foot vertical difference with universal access. Contemporary civic amenities activate the plaza, accommodating events of up to 20,000 people in a variety of configurations.
To meet sustainability goals, the design introduces 250 trees, 3,000 shrubs, and 10,000 native perennials. Over 50% of the site is shaded, minimizing heat-island effects and sequestering more than 55,000 tons of carbon emissions. A 10,000 gallon underground rainwater harvesting tank provides irrigation to the entire plaza. Porous planting beds and permeable paving now make up over 60% of the plaza surfaces, filtering rainwater and restoring groundwater. The project has been recognized by the following: Preservation Massachusetts Frederick Law Olmsted Award; BE+ Green Building Showcase; Engineering News Record New England Best Projects Award; Boston Society of Civil Engineers, Sustainability in Civil Engineering Award; Boston Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award.
The redesign of Boston City Hall Plaza honors its Brutalist legacy while softening its edges with planting, new amenities, and accessible infrastructure. The design preserves the historic brick character—now upgraded with accessible wire-cut, permeable brick systems. Historic radial step alignments are reinterpreted as granite bands and seat walls that cascade into a newly planted plaza. The project represents a bold commitment to sustainability and resilience. The planting design introduces a thriving urban ecology in the city’s core, provides shade to over half of the site, reduces urban heat island effects, and contributes to sequestration of carbon emissions. Over 60% of the surface is permeable, with porous beds and paving and a rainwater harvesting tank that irrigates the entire plaza—mitigating stormwater runoff and protecting Boston Harbor from pollutants. Designed for residents and visitors alike, the plaza offers a variety of active and passive spaces. A flexible central expanse accommodates civic events and large gatherings, while smaller-scale zones invite everyday use with water features and shaded seating options. A playscape draws an entirely new generation of users and includes areas for sensory, water, engaged, and adventure play designed in a style affectionately deemed ‘Kinder Brutalism’, alluding to City Hall’s forms and materiality. The result is a greener, more inclusive plaza that reflects Boston’s values and invites all to gather, linger, and belong.
“The spaces we build are a reflection of our City and our values… and this plaza wasn’t just shaped by our values, it brings them to life” - Mayor Michelle Wu, Plaza Opening 2022
At Sasaki, we believe in better design together. Defining the future of place must be a collective, contextual, and values-driven exercise. We all have a stake in this work.
For over seventy years, Sasaki has brought together the best of architecture, interior design, planning and urban design, space planning, landscape architecture, and civil engineering to shape the places in which we live. Out of our Boston, New York, Denver, Los Angeles, and Shanghai offices, we are defining the contours of place and redefining what’s possible along the way. Today, we are a diverse practice of over 300 professionals who share a singular passion for creating authentic, equitable, and inspiring places.
