Charlesgate Park
Archival evidence and point-cloud survey became the working geometry for a reparative park restoration.
The proposal recovered the buried course of the Muddy River and treated public testimony, ecological repair, and the highway itself as existing conditions, not background context.
Role
Architectural designerComputational site modeling
Outcome
A phased restoration proposal grounded in archival research, survey geometry, public hearings, and maintenance planning.
The public brief
Repair began with the record.
Charlesgate was once a connector in Boston’s park system before a highway buried the Muddy River and split the landscape from its history. Rather than treating the residual space as blank, the project combined archival plans, point-cloud survey, automated tree modeling, public hearings, and maintenance planning. Daylighting the river became both ecological infrastructure and a way to make the site’s loss legible. The design translated that evidence into a phased sequence the city and community could evaluate and maintain.
At a glance
Point-cloud highway survey · Grasshopper tree-placement system · Phased public-realm delivery
In the record
Historical river overlays · Point-cloud / mesh comparison · Public-hearing and phasing diagrams · Automated tree-placement script · Meshified highway site model · Maintenance and access sequencing plan
Recover the record
Historical plans and environmental research located the culverted river and made the site’s political history part of the design brief.
Build the site model
Survey point clouds, a meshified highway, and automated tree placement turned an infrastructurally difficult site into geometry the team could reason with.
Return it in phases
Public input, ecological repair, maintenance, and incremental access were coordinated as one delivery sequence rather than separate promises.