Combining Infrastructure and Place-Making in Civic Space / Friends of Five Creeks Features El Cerrito City Hall Design

This month’s atmospheric river in Northern California is an apt backdrop for the San Francisco Bay Area blog Blue-Green Building: Building Cities that Protect Streams, Bay, and Ocean feature on Carducci Associates’ El Cerrito City Hall. The civic space highlights the ability of landscape architecture to create ecological and hydrological systems as stormwater management infrastructure that also contributes to a sense of place and regional identity.

El Cerrito City Hall, built in 2010, consists of a LEED-certified building and landscape that are designed to complement each other. Recycled building and site run-off irrigate the California native plant demonstration garden and drought-tolerant plantings. Custom furnishings include a fountain inspired by the journey of water that travels from the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific Ocean.

The full article can be read here, and more information about our project is available here.

Blue-Green Building is written by Friends of Five Creeks, “an all-volunteer creek- and watershed-restoration group working in North Berkeley, Albany, Kensington, and south El Cerrito, and Richmond, Alameda, and Contra Costa Counties” in California.

Carducci Associates' custom seating and fountain accompany a native, drought-tolerant, and educational civic space.

Site Visit