2025 Award of Excellence
General Design
Presidio Tunnel Tops
San Francisco, California
Landscape Architect:
Field Operations
Project Team:
- Project Lead, Landscape Architecture, Public Realm: Field Operations
- Architecture & Facilities: EHDD
- Civil, Site Structural & Stormwater Engineering: Magnusson Klemencic Associates
- Geotechnical Engineering: Miller Pacific
- Environmental Engineering: WOOD
- Sustainability Consultant: Stok
- Mechanical, Electrical & Plumbing Engineering: PAE Engineers
- Lighting Design: HLB Lighting Design
- Water Feature Design: Fluidity Design Consultants
- Playground Consultant: Site Masters, Inc.
- Playground Structure Consultant: Earthscape
- Operations & Maintenance Planning: ETM Associates, LLC
- Irrigation: d.d. Pagano, Inc.
- Soil Scientist: Wallace Laboratories
- Cost Estimating: Oppenheim Lewis, Inc.
- California Arboriculture Consultant: Perry & Associates
- Bay Area Horticulture & Grasses Specialist: Greenlee & Associates
- Bay Area Horticulture: Richard Turner
- Signage Designer: Clearstory
- General Contractor: Swinerton Builders
- General Contractor (Outpost Meadow): Plant Construction
- Driftwood Bench Fabrication: Gizmo Art Production
Photo Credit(s):
Main Photo: Caitlin Atkinson
Photos 1, 3-13: Caitlin Atkinson
Photos 2, 14: Field Operations
About the Project:
Presidio Tunnel Tops reimagines a once-elevated highway into a vibrant, ecologically rich 14 acres of public space. Built atop 7 lanes of Presidio Parkway tunnels, the new landscape stitches together historic parklands with the San Francisco Bay and transforms infrastructure into an immersive experience, choreographing movement, topography, and ecology to create an open, accessible pedestrian connection across 40 feet of grade change. The park has become a central place for the community with a network of trails, bluff landscapes, meadows, dynamic overlooks, and spaces for gathering.
The park balances essential community spaces—including a new transit center, visitor center, campfire circle, and youth campus with an innovative play and learning environment—with open space inspired by the sites natural and cultural history. Presidio Tunnel Tops opened in July 2022, with nearly 1.8 million visits in the first year and welcoming 100 community-based organizations. The Presidio Trust is also working on an additional picnic and gathering area called the Outpost Meadow, slated to open in 2025, and to prepare a long-range landscape master plan for the larger 1,500-acre site.
