All photos by Ed Wonsek.
Landezine, an international landscape architecture platform, recently featured Clippership Wharf, highlighting how landscape design connects coastal resilience, habitat restoration, and public waterfront access in East Boston. Designed by our landscape architects at Halvorson, the project transformed two former industrial wharves into a waterfront destination, reconnecting the neighborhood to a shoreline closed to the public for three decades.
The feature explores the project’s response to rising sea levels through a tiered landscape, with the Harborwalk along the water, public gathering spaces above, and residences and courtyards at a higher elevation. A living shoreline combines salt marsh terraces, rocky beaches, and native plantings to restore coastal habitat and help dissipate wave energy. Together, these elements accommodate changing coastal conditions while creating opportunities for residents and visitors to experience the harbor.
Approximately four acres of public waterfront space offer places to walk, gather, and enjoy the water, including a continuous Harborwalk, lawn, amphitheater, kayak launch, and fishing pier. Interpretive signs connect visitors with the site’s shipbuilding history and restored ecology.
Read the feature to explore how the design brings community use and environmental restoration together along Boston Harbor.