Faculty-Led Stoss Receives Holcim Foundation Grand Prize for Boston’s Moakley Park
Stoss Landscape Urbanism, led by Chris Reed, Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture, was recognized for its sustainable, socially inclusive design.
Chris Reed, professor in practice of Landscape Architecture and co-director of the Master in Landscape Architecture degree programs at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), has received the Holcim Foundation Grand Prize (North America ) for his leadership of the Moakley Park transformation in South Boston.
The international award, regarded as the most significant in the field of sustainable design, recognizes Moakley Park as a model for climate-adaptive, socially inclusive urban waterfronts. The project, currently under construction, reimagines a low-lying, flood-prone recreational park as a resilient public landscape that integrates coastal protection, ecological restoration, and everyday civic life.
Led by Reed and his firm Stoss Landscape Urbanism , the design advances a “landscape first” strategy: reshaping the ground to manage storm surge and sea-level rise; weaving in salt- and flood-tolerant plant communities; and elevating and reorganizing sports fields, play areas, and public amenities to ensure long-term usability. Shaded promenades, flexible gathering spaces, and improved connections to surrounding neighborhoods reinforce the park’s role as critical social infrastructure for one of Boston’s most diverse communities.
According to the Holcim Foundation’s statement about the award, “Moakley Park’s thoughtful integration of resilient infrastructure within a vibrant public realm demonstrates its significant potential for replication in other vulnerable coastal and riverside cities in North America and beyond.”
In teaching and practice, Reed has long advanced the idea that landscapes are dynamic systems capable of absorbing environmental risk while supporting cultural expression and public life. Moakley Park brings these ambitions to the scale of the city, positioning the waterfront as a living buffer that adapts over time.
