SOM has won (yet another) major commission: the master plan for Colombo Port City in Sri Lanka. Covering a 269 hectare site, the master plan is for a new city development that will extend the existing Colombo Central Business District. The project, which is designed in collaboration with Grant Associates landscape architecture, is intended to respond to the sensitive ecology of the area, an d includes canal edges, new gardens, a new harbor, and a new city park.

The master plan is oriented around a central civic plaza inspired by hanging gardens and featuring shaded promenades. “The locally resonant design approach is also apparent along the canal edge promenades,” the press release states, “where inlets of varying character reference the lagoons of Sri Lanka’s rich and articulated coastline.