Firm： Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects

Type： Landscape + Planning › Public Park

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2023

SIZE： 300,000 sqft - 500,000 sqft

BUDGET： $50M - 100M

Situated in the heart of Memorial Park, the 100-acre Land Bridge & Prairie creates a new high-performing landscape and public greenspace within the rich cultural and ecological Gulf Coast context. Enhancing the urban wilderness character of the park and providing expanded opportunities for recreation, this land bridge offers a variety of new features to the park. Visitors are able to learn about native ecologies along the carefully planned trails designed accommodate multiple levels of recreational pursuit, from leisurely winding paths to hills and scrambles. New vantage points of Houston’s skylines from the top of the Land Bridge provide an iconic gathering place for sunrise meditation, evening stargazing, and special events.

Part of the 2015 Memorial Park Master Plan, the Land Bridge & Prairie is a solution to Memorial Drive — a six-lane roadway built in 1955 that divided the park. The transformative project creates two dynamic connections over Memorial Drive to reconnect the north and south sides of the park, expanding the existing network of trail systems by three miles. Over 500,000 cubic yards of soil was excavated from the site and other areas of the park, bio-inoculated, and used to form the land bridge mounds which support native prairie and savannah plantings, a multi-use trail network, and open gathering spaces.

The prairie restoration, which adjoins the land bridge, re-introduces 45 acres of native Coastal Prairie – one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America. The newly created Coastal Prairie will help strengthen the surrounding ecologies and bring an immersive opportunity to experience this critical native ecology. The prairie will be home to hundreds of species of flora and fauna and will provide essential food and shelter for migratory birds and insects. The Prairie is a high-performance landscape that slows and stores stormwater in carefully calibrated channels and wetlands. This soil-deep rehabilitated ecology will sequester atmospheric carbon, provide cleaner air, and improve habitat.