In 2002, the founders of the Steel Yard purchased a vacant steel fabrication facility as a home for their nascent arts based non-profit. Faced with an expensive and comprehensive brownfield cleanup to allow the site to be used as envisioned, the Steel Yard and KMDG had to negotiate environmental requirements while also leveraging limited funds to meet programmatic needs and leave room for the organization’s future growth.

Competing interests in large paved surfaces for outdoor work space and vehicular movement and a sustainable campus without large expanses of impervious pavement are the driving forces of the landscape design. The design is centered on a paved plane, ‘the carpet,’ which is woven with heavy- and light-duty pavements, impermeable and pervious materials. The margins beyond the pavement act as ‘stormwater moats’ infiltrating runoff and providing habitat for volunteer vegetation. Building the carpet over existing grade reduced excavate and allowed all contaminated soil to remain on-site in landforms.

The final project both met the preservation standards required of a National Historic Register site and leads by example in its innovative design for passive, on-site storm water management.

Today, the Steel Yard is a reclaimed urban landscape that represents the neighborhood’s industrial history while also offering a campus for industrial arts education, workforce training, and small-scale manufacturing. In addition, the Steel Yard is a lead partner in the intentional reclamation of Providence's "Industrial Valley" and serves as a modern, publicly accessible, de facto park.