The WRT / Urban Strategies team was selected as one of five international teams to design the public open space on Governors Island. Positioned at the heart of New York Harbor, the Island required a powerful vision to galvanize its many settings that take visitors from the historic collection of campus like buildings around Fort Jay and Castle Williams in the north, to the new 40 acre park in the south. Bounded by a waterfront promenade, the Island offers spectacular views back to lower Manhattan, across the Buttermilk Channel to Brooklyn, and out to the harbor where The Statue of Liberty waves back. 

WRT designed a complex system of park programs, topography, vegetation strategies, water management, reuse of buildings, and circulation to collapse art, light, agriculture, commerce, education, retreat, recreation, history and culture all into one place. The backbones of this system were designed for longevity. The park is the modern adaptation of what in essence also draws millions of people repeatedly  back to Central Park.