The area in which Dewey Square is located had traditionally been an industrial district—primarily for the production of leather, garments and printing, as well as general warehousing. A portion of modern-day Dewey Square was originally underwater and was the site of a number of shipping piers. The size of this new district rivaled the dimension of the traditional city core. Our design expanded the scope of the previous plan to include the sizeable, privately owned plazas that abut the square, and re-conceived the entire area as one urban space with a single contemporary character unique within the city.

By 1984, the fundamental and immensely liberating ideas on which post-modernism as a critical endeavor rested had been corrupted, misunderstood and consumed enough to produce a common building styling that covered the land from coast to coast. The professions of development planning and landscape design were also affected by these events.