In Omaha, Nebraska, at Heartwood Preserve, we’re artfully creating climate change infrastructure that fully honors the beauty of the land.

Through engaging spaces that deliberately acknowledge time and place, Heartwood will further connect people with the ebb and force of nature and, hopefully, deepen their regard for it.

As part of a 500-acre, mixed-use community being consciously developed by Applied Underwriters, the 16 limestone-clad basins reach across over a hundred Nebraska acres. Beyond long-term flood mitigation for a region ravaged by storms, the system restores native wetlands, woodlands, and prairie. 

While the basswood models were built to inform our design of Heartwood’s greenways, the drawings were a reverie that brought me even closer to these spaces and kept my head and hands occupied during the pandemic.