Case Study: PWP Landscape Architecture achieves iconic, minimalist landscape designs with VectorWorks

Minimalistic Design with Enormous Impact

PWP Landscape Architecture, led by founder Peter Walker in Berkeley, CA, is a boutique firm known for Modernist, minimalist landscapes and high-profile institutional projects. The firm faced an unusually complex and sensitive challenge: designing the National 9/11 Memorial on a seven‑acre, highly congested World Trade Center site with dozens of public and private stakeholders, concurrent construction around and below the plaza, a long multi‑year timeline, and the emotional needs of victims’ families.

PWP responded with a spare, powerful design that pairs two monumental, stone‑lined voids with a planted, park‑like plaza—hand‑selected swamp white oaks, the Survivor Tree, and carefully chosen furnishings—to focus reflection and resilience. Sustainable systems capture and reuse rainwater, and an engineered comb weir cut fountain energy use dramatically; Vectorworks Landmark supported detailed 3D modeling. The Memorial opened in 2011 to widespread acclaim, providing a durable, contemplative civic space that meets practical constraints and the community’s emotional needs while shaping contemporary landscape practice.

PWP Landscape Architecture

Peter Walker

PWP Landscape Architecture