AIASF International Practice Committee featured event with support of Urban Design + Infrastructure Committee as part of an AIASF multi-committee program has designed a series of discussions on Waterfront Design.

Our sixth session in the series will include International Waterfront projects The National Opera and Ballet in central Oslo, Norway and Waterfront Resilience Project in San Francisco.

The events in this series are exclusively available online during Covid-19 pandemic until the reopening of the AIASF facilities. Please register at below to gain access to the Zoom Panel Discussion.

Thanks to Dri Design‘s generous support, the first 48 registrations for this program were complimentary.

Michelle, Michael, and Kevin will discuss their experiences working on projects in Oregon City, Oslo, and San Francisco, with a focus on economic, ecological, and social resilience. These three city waterfronts share industrial pasts, but as they enter a new phase of life, they must address uncertain climate futures and changing urban interests.

Michelle will present two primary case studies; the National Opera and Ballet in central Oslo, Norway and the Willamette Falls Riverwalk in Oregon City, Oregon. Both waterfront sites, an urban fjord and seasonally dynamic riverfront, embody a complex natural, built, and social environment. One completed and the other underway, both embrace the complexity of the existing landscape while envisioning a future set in motion through selective design intervention intended to reveal past histories and offer new experiences along these waterfronts.

Michael will discuss his deep involvement with the Presidio Trust’s long-term and ongoing transformation. He will address how economy and changing interests have shaped the Presidio over time as an evolving and dynamic urban national park.

Kevin will share his work on the San Francisco Waterfront Resilience Project; led by the Port of San Francisco to adapt 7 ½ miles of urban waterfront for sea level rise in 2100 while increasing seismic safety, ecology and social equity through design.

These presentations from international practices on global waterfront projects will offer valuable lessons for current challenges facing on the City of San Francisco’s waterfront.

Gold Sponsor

AIASF and the International Practice Committee would like to thank Dri Design for their Gold-level sponsorship of this program. Thanks to Dri Design‘s generous support, the first 48 registrations for this program were complimentary.

Learning Objectives

Attendees will learn about:

1. The value in understanding and embodying existing site conditions as foundational to design transformations.
2. The role that designers can play in shaping a vision that acknowledges unknown futures while also setting in motion opportunity for continued transformations driven by population changes, economic values, and climate impacts.
3. Working with a diverse group of stakeholders to build consensus around complex values and diverse social, economic, and environmental interests.
4. How engaging and responding to complex cultural and historic influences can help ensure collective ownership in the places we design.

Featured Projects

National Opera and Ballet
Presenter: Michelle Delk
Landscape / Architecture: Snøhetta
Client: Statsbygg, The Governmental Building Agency

An urban fjord and seasonally dynamic riverfront, embody a complex natural, built, and social environment. It embrace the complexity of the existing landscape while envisioning a future set in motion through selective design intervention intended to reveal past histories and offer new experiences along these waterfronts.

San Francisco Waterfront Resilience Project
Presenter: Kevin Conger
Landscape Architect: CMG Landscape Architecture
Led by: the Port of San Francisco

Kevin will be discussing the San Francisco Waterfront Resilience Project, which is being led by the Port of San Francisco to adapt 7 ½ miles of urban waterfront for sea level rise in 2100 while increasing seismic safety, ecology and social equity through design.

About the Moderator

Michael Boland, FASLA
Chief Park Officer

For three decades Michael Boland has focused his academic and professional work on the future of parks as vehicles for addressing the pressing social and environmental challenges of our time. As a parkmaker, his work has focused on the transformation of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and in particular the Presidio of San Francisco, into an innovative urban national park. Michael’s work has included public, private, and non-profit experience, with a focus on managing multiple interdisciplinary teams; delivering high-quality, high-stakes, high-visibility public projects; facilitating complex community engagement and public participation processes; creating relevant contemporary park programming; and modeling 21st century sustainable stewardship practices in urban parklands.

About the Speakers

Michelle Delk
Partner and Landscape Architect, Snøhetta

Based in New York City, Michelle is a passionate champion and designer of the urban public realm. As a Partner and Landscape Architect with Snøhetta, her work is representative of a simple foundational premise shared with the firm: to create places that enhance relationships between people and their environments. Aspirational and pragmatic, her work reveals and complements the embedded beauty and rational functionality within the built environment.

Michelle’s enthusiasm is reflected in her commitment to design and leadership within her firm and community. She is an active board member for the Urban Design Forum in New York City, a member of The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s Stewardship Council, and lectures throughout the world. Currently, she leads several efforts with Snøhetta, including the design of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library landscape; a re-imagining of the 300+ acre Ford Research and Engineering Campus in Dearborn, Michigan; and the renovation of the 550 Madison privately owned public space in midtown Manhattan.

Kevin Conger
Founding Partner, CMG Landscape Architecture

Kevin Conger is a founding Partner of CMG Landscape Architecture in San Francisco. Kevin promotes equitable democratic public space and urban ecology as the cornerstones for social and ecological resilience in projects that include the regeneration of the defunct military bases at Treasure Island and Hunters Point; Bay Meadows racetrack redevelopment; the redesign of Market Street to remove cars and improve transit and public spaces; the expansion of Moscone Convention Center; and the community based Yerba Buena Streetlife Plan among many others.

Future Events

• AIASF Waterfronts Symposium, Date TBD
  • Led by the AIASF International Practice Committee and supported by the Urban Design + Infrastructure Committee and their guests, addressing local application of the preceding events.

For more information about the Committees and their events:

• AIASF International Practice Committee
• AIASF Urban Design + Infrastructure Committee