Landscape Architecture that Supports Campus Evolution
Through numerous planning and design commissions over the past 15 years, NBW has partnered with Georgia Tech to help shape a campus that reflects the institution's academic, social, and ecological ambitions. From stormwater management and cooling canopy cover to increased biodiversity and improved soil health, the Georgia Tech landscape is a working system that does more than beautify the campus.
NBW's projects to date include the award-winning EcoCommons, the Engineered Biosystems Building landscape, the North x Northeast Sector Plan, the 100-acre South-Central Sector Plan, and several student housing projects that together reflect a long-term vision for the Institute's public realm. Individual sites are integrated within a broader network of planted paths, gathering spaces, and places for rest and reflection. Each project enhances both performance and experience.
Planning the Campus Public Realm
NBW has developed multiple large-scale planning studies with Georgia Tech, building on the Institute's overall campus master plan. Starting in 2013, the South-Central Sector Plan established an integrated vision for stormwater infrastructure, ecological restoration, and academic engagement across 100 acres. Research uncovered both physical and cultural features, from a buried creek to Georgia’s Civil Rights movement, offering opportunities to surface narratives of resilience. Subsequent NBW plans addressed the Engineered Biosystems Building Sector and the North x Northeast Sector Plan, encompassing the EcoCommons as well as academic buildings. NBW's planning approach bridges ecological infrastructure with cultural relevance and public realm design that stimulates campus life.
Engineered Biosystems Building Landscape
In collaboration with Lake Flato Architects and local landscape architects JB+A, NBW led the landscape design for the Engineered Biosystems Building (EBB), weaving it into the broader EcoCommons district and surrounding campus. The landscape accommodates a wide range of use, from quiet study areas along a rill to a shaded amphitheater for informal gatherings. Every feature is designed for both performance and experience. A watercourse along the building’s north façade manages stormwater, condensate, and building dewatering, while supporting native plantings and feeding into a constructed wetland. This system culminates in a textured rill and then a meandering channel through dense plantings and connects to the adjacent EcoCommons landscape. The north lawn is used as a nursery for cultivating trees to be planted across campus.
EcoCommons: A Convergence of Biodiversity, Stormwater Management and Memory
The EcoCommons is Georgia Tech's most significant standalone landscape project to date. Centering on eight acres of former parking lot and extending through 80 acres of campus greenspace, the EcoCommons is a living system for gathering, learning, and ecological restoration. Regrading the land allowed for the reestablishment of historic drainage patterns and creek flows, now traced by a boardwalk and watercourse moving through a wet meadow. Biodiverse, native plants strengthen remnants of the Piedmont mesic forest.
The EcoCommons helps meet one of Georgia Tech’s primary sustainability goals by capturing and diverting millions of gallons of runoff from the city’s sewer system. The landscape offers generous spaces for community use including a shaded learning deck, a hammock grove, and a trio of slides. It also includes a memorial for an important piece of Civil Rights history.
Unity Plaza honors the bravery of three students who, in 1964 on this very site—then home to the segregated Pickrick Diner—put themselves at risk to uphold the newly passed Civil Rights Act. Three vertical concrete monoliths, three platform benches, and three longleaf pines rising from a band of native grasses honor their memory while providing a shared space for reflection.
Peterson Residence Hall
Designed by Mithun with Lord Aeck Sargent as collaborating design architect, Peterson Residence Hall is the first new student housing building on campus since 2005. Located on the west side of campus between Eighth and Ninth Streets along Northside Drive, the 191,000-square-foot, 862-bed residence is designed specifically for first-year students. NBW designed the outdoor terraces, study areas, and "front porch" gathering space to extend the community-centered ethos of the architecture into the landscape. A shaded tulip poplar-lined promenade welcomes students from the street. Hammocks, catenary lighting, and flexible seating create inviting outdoor living spaces. Along the pedestrian and bike connectors at Northside Drive, sugar maples and oaks reinforce Georgia Tech's broader campus planting framework, grounded in the ecologies of Georgia's Piedmont region. NBW is also working on the renovation of two other student residence halls on campus.
