Boston City Hall & Plaza

Strong democracies and great cities require excellent civic spaces. Over multiple projects, we’ve developed strategies and tactics to rebuild Boston’s City Hall Plaza. We have focused on planning for stormwater, accessibility, canopy, and circulation—all factors whereby small improvements can add up to bold transformations.

Originally intended as an open field that encouraged civic engagement and public expression, the plaza has suffered from deferred maintenance, a lack of programming, changes in the surrounding community, and altered patterns of use within the building. For the first time since its construction, our most recent effort with Utile Architecture and Planning, has been a wholistic rethinking of the building and the plaza together as a living system.

Read the 2019 Rethink City Hall plan here. An interpretation of this concept design and master plan was implemented by Sasaki in 2022.