Anya Domlesky

Urban designer Anya Domlesky, PLA, is currently the director of research and an associate principal at SWA. She runs XL Lab, the firm’s innovation group, which undertakes practice-based research. As a designer, Domlesky focuses on landscape-driven urban design and environmental planning. She has largely worked on issues involving urbanization, coasts, and water—in Belgrade, the San Francisco Bay Area, Haiti, Louisiana, the Great Lakes, Siberia, South Florida, and New York City.

The creation of public space from unused, underused, or unequally shared linear spaces in urban areas has been happening for a long time. Major reference points in the architectural and planning worlds are Boston’s Emerald Necklace, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (1878–1896); Freeway Park in Seattle (1972-1976); the Baltimore Inner Harbor (1963–1983); the Promenade Plantée in Paris (1987-1994); and the High Line in New York (2005–2019).
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