Our work for Everett Middle School transforms an underused parking lot into a jam-packed playground that reduces stormwater runoff and increases student health and happiness.
Something remarkable is happening at Everett Middle School in San Francisco. What was once little more than an asphalt parking lot is being transformed into a vibrant new landscape for recreation, outdoor learning, and community life. Through a public utilities grant and the generosity of a private donor, the school has an extraordinary opportunity to reimagine its outdoor environment and give students something they have long deserved: a place of their own.
Previously, the school had no athletic fields, courts, play equipment, shade, or dedicated spaces for outdoor learning. Rather than simply replacing asphalt with a conventional playground, Groundworks Office saw an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how the school's limited outdoor space could support student life, environmental performance, and the surrounding community.
The design process began with the students themselves. Through in-person workshops and an interactive digital "kit of parts," every student was invited to imagine what their new landscape could become. Students explored possibilities, negotiated competing priorities, and made decisions about which features mattered most to them. Parents, teachers, and school district representatives contributed their perspectives, helping shape a collective vision that balances ambition with the realities of the site.
At the heart of the design, a multipurpose sports field and ball courts establish a new center for active recreation. Around these spaces, a diverse collection of outdoor classrooms, a small amphitheater, learning gardens, climbing areas, shade structures, and planted landscapes creates opportunities for exploration, gathering, and informal learning. Every square foot is considered, allowing an ambitious range of activities to coexist within a compact urban campus.
The landscape also performs important environmental work. An integrated stormwater management system combines bioretention planting areas, permeable surfaces, subsurface check dams, and new tree planting to capture and manage runoff while improving shade, comfort, and ecological function. What might otherwise have been treated as infrastructure requirements became opportunities to enrich the landscape and connect students to the environmental systems around them.
The result is far more than a new playground. It is a transformation of the school's outdoor environment into a dynamic, multifunctional landscape that supports physical activity, creativity, environmental learning, and social connection.
Most importantly, it is a place shaped by the students and community who will use it every day—a landscape that reflects their ideas, responds to their needs, and creates new possibilities for the future of Everett Middle School.
Something remarkable is happening at Everett Middle School in San Francisco. What was once little more than an asphalt parking lot is being transformed into a vibrant new landscape for recreation, outdoor learning, and community life. Through a public utilities grant and the generosity of a private donor, the school has an extraordinary opportunity to reimagine its outdoor environment and give students something they have long deserved: a place of their own.
Previously, the school had no athletic fields, courts, play equipment, shade, or dedicated spaces for outdoor learning. Rather than simply replacing asphalt with a conventional playground, Groundworks Office saw an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how the school's limited outdoor space could support student life, environmental performance, and the surrounding community.
The design process began with the students themselves. Through in-person workshops and an interactive digital "kit of parts," every student was invited to imagine what their new landscape could become. Students explored possibilities, negotiated competing priorities, and made decisions about which features mattered most to them. Parents, teachers, and school district representatives contributed their perspectives, helping shape a collective vision that balances ambition with the realities of the site.
At the heart of the design, a multipurpose sports field and ball courts establish a new center for active recreation. Around these spaces, a diverse collection of outdoor classrooms, a small amphitheater, learning gardens, climbing areas, shade structures, and planted landscapes creates opportunities for exploration, gathering, and informal learning. Every square foot is considered, allowing an ambitious range of activities to coexist within a compact urban campus.
The landscape also performs important environmental work. An integrated stormwater management system combines bioretention planting areas, permeable surfaces, subsurface check dams, and new tree planting to capture and manage runoff while improving shade, comfort, and ecological function. What might otherwise have been treated as infrastructure requirements became opportunities to enrich the landscape and connect students to the environmental systems around them.
The result is far more than a new playground. It is a transformation of the school's outdoor environment into a dynamic, multifunctional landscape that supports physical activity, creativity, environmental learning, and social connection.
Most importantly, it is a place shaped by the students and community who will use it every day—a landscape that reflects their ideas, responds to their needs, and creates new possibilities for the future of Everett Middle School.