Buffalo Bayou East Houston, TX / 2017

Buffalo Bayou East is Houston’s working waterfront, gritty, industrial, and full of unrealized potential. This master plan reframes the bayou not as leftover infrastructure, but as the civic spine of East Houston. Grounded in a Civic Ecology framework, the plan binds community, ecology, and industry into an integrated system. The bayou becomes a connector—linking the Second and Fifth Wards to each other, to Downtown, and back to the water.

We start with what’s here….rail lines, silos, steep banks, historic neighborhoods, floodplains, cultural anchors. Instead of erasing this complexity, the plan elevates it, restoring riparian systems, daylighting historic drainage patterns, and transforming post-industrial land into resilient public landscapes. A continuous waterfront park and trail network stitches together schools, libraries, transit stations, markets, and cultural institutions. Green streets extend into neighborhoods. New bridges, boat launches, and civic spaces open the water’s edge. Infrastructure becomes landscape. Landscape becomes identity.

This is not a pastoral park…It is an authentic 21st-century waterfront—industrial in character, ecological in performance, and inclusive in growth. Buffalo Bayou East puts the bayou back to work for the community, for wildlife, and for the future of Houston.

Will lead the design of the competition entry for the Buffalo Bayou East while at OLIN