Bayfront Park is the last piece of a network of open-spaces and trails that envision a new way of engaging the Eastern Waterfront from Bayview-Hunters Point to the Embarcadero. This network aims to create a new landscape that incubates community connections to a once-industrial edge, provides recreational amenities both on land and water, connects to existing pathways and trail systems, provides open space for events and everyday use, and connects to adjacencies including the future Golden State Warriors Event Center.

San Francisco is dynamic – the center of a region that prides itself on technological innovation, environmental stewardship, strong communities and a celebration of the ‘other’. Bayfront Park provides an opportunity to design a resilient and contemporary park that leverages this dynamism and responds with flexible open space that considers flux and innovation as design opportunities.

The design for Bayfront Park requires anticipating and accommodating a variety of passive and active uses at multiple scales – from a crowd of 5,000 tail-gating Warriors fans, to a Bay-to-Breakers warm-up, to a romantic selfie moment for two– within one cohesive space.  The design works to harness ecological services, considers drought-tolerance and longterm maintenance strategies, and integrates stormwater capture and treatment seamlessly to create a 21st century park. Like the city it celebrates, Bayfront Park must be dynamic, interactive, and flexible to the needs of a changing region. Digital integration of information and storytelling, a celebration of ecological processes and succession, and a robust schedule of programmatic and revenue-generating endeavors will keep users continually engaged with this living park.

Integral to the design process is engaging with the community to cultivate a common understanding about project objectives and goals. Through a series of workshops, Surfacedesign worked with the community to develop a set of programmatic and design objectives that have helped guide the design for the park. The landscape itself is a palimpsest of ecological and cultural histories and is enlivened by the users who contribute their own stories and memories. As a new venue for public events, concerts and performances, Bayfront Park will be integral to the cultural renaissance of Mission Bay. The park will be a forum for cultural narratives to interact, reshaping one another and providing new frontiers for exploring the histories, uses and meaning of the Eastern Waterfront and its greater urban context.

Location: San Francisco, CA

Status: Under Construction

Project Type: Public Waterfront Park

Collaborators: Lotus Water, GHD

Imagery: Surfacedesign