Groundwork is a landscape and urbanism studio working at the scale of the public realm — rivers, edges, streets, and the slow infrastructure of a warming city.
A four-kilometre river park that daylights a buried canal and stitches six neighbourhoods back to the water.
Four moves turn a drainage channel into a living public spine.
The concrete culvert is opened for the first time in sixty years, returning the river to view, to touch, and to the city’s weather.
A four-lane road is removed and the two banks are knitted into a single walkable surface — no kerb, no hierarchy, no cars.
A sequence of native terraces — reed, poplar, holm oak — drop the summer temperature by up to four degrees.
A soft flood margin is designed to flood on purpose, holding a hundred-year storm instead of piping it away.
A studio of twenty — landscape architects, urbanists, ecologists, and one hydrologist — working where the city meets water, weather, and time.
Every site begins with where the water wants to go. We design with that force, not against it.
Planting is not decoration. It is the cooling, the drainage, and the walls of the room.
We work for the people with no client — the ones who simply live nearby.