By identifying, restoring, and stewarding our native landscapes, we are not only helping to restore habitats, we are also helping to clean our water, rebuild soil, purify the air, and bring nature back into the places where we work, live, and play.  In other words, we are re-establishing an important land ethic that connects us all to nature.

Our multi-disciplinary resources allow us to plan and design development to be compatible with nature and minimize adverse impacts. In our designs, we strive to carry forth the tenets of Green Infrastructure: manage water near its source, maintain and protect sensitive and valuable natural resources, use sustainable materials and practices, take examples from nature.

Much of our infrastructure is built along the shoreline and therefore threatened by such forces which are occurring at higher frequency and intensity.  There is increasing recognition that natural ecological systems alone or in combination with man-made structures protect this infrastructure while also enhancing ecological and human use and enjoyment. It takes a multidisciplinary team of experts to affect such solutions. GZA has the requisite resources to plan, permit and design resilient shorelines in both riverine and tidal environments.  

Our curiosity to understand and utilize nature’s ingenuity drives innovation at GZA’s DWN Studio. We bring together our diverse expertise in these sciences to our DWN Studio where we strive to understand nature’s powerful tools and how to apply them in the natural and built environment. Through Natural and Nature-based Feature (NNBF) design, our DWN Studio creates innovative biotreatment mechanisms for our clients that are appropriate, sustainable, permittable, buildable, attainable, and cost effective.