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By Kristin Davey
The 52-acre Brooklyn Botanical Garden is an escape from the
big city and the new visitor center helps to portray the peacefulness of the
surrounding gardens. With its living roof, curving glass walls, and 42,000
square feet of freshly planted landscape, the $28 million, 22,000 square foot
visitor center conceals the city’s ecological past with its rapidly evolving
urban future.
“In working
on the visitor center, we really wanted to blur the distinctions between what
is architecture and what is landscape. In that sense, the building literally
melts and transitions into the garden, creating a new building typology and a
way of looking at buildings,” says Michael Manfredi, principal and founding
partner at Weiss/Manfredi Architecture.
The
Brooklyn Botanical Garden functions as a natural oasis in the midst of a
concrete and steel sea. Founded in 1910, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden is set
on a plot of land located between Flatbush Avenue on the west and Washington
Avenue on the east.
Viewed from
the garden side, the structure is barely noticeable from the surrounding
landscape due to the 10,000 square foot living roof that is the host to more
than 40,000 plants, which include warm and cold season grasses, perennials, and
bulbs. The roof also minimizes and collects storm water runoff, diverting into
two separate rain-garden plazas on site, which are apart of the greater 42,000
square feet of new landscaping featuring more than 60,000 new plantings created
by Weiss/Manfredi and landscape consultant HM White.
In the
upper terrace area surrounding the visitor center, Weiss/Manfredi and HM White
designed a stepped set of terraces, each planted with unique flowers to be the
mediator between the green roof and ginkgo trees.
Twenty-eight
geothermal wells heat and cool the building. Also, considering that the
building is nestled into the surrounding hillside, means that there is great
natural insulation. Another unique feature is that the wood paneled walls in
the atrium are made from the ginkgo trees that had to be taken down during the
construction of the buildings. The
visitor center aspires to LEED Gold certification for environmental
sustainability.
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12 comments:
beautiful and peaceful, what a nice place to go to get away from city life!
Open space, look comfortable and nice. I like the idea of growing plant on the roof, just so fresh and green.
Really love the open space with the natural lighting coming in. The green roof is wonderful and adds more life to the building.
I love the scenery and the big windows
The first picture really caught my eye. I love the fact that they have included sustainability on the roofs of the building!
Oh my gosh, this is beautiful! What a concept, especially in such an urban area. The way the architecture melts into the landscape makes this place an inviting getaway.
It is a very interesting choice, but excellent! Different and modern is always good!
This sounds like such an amazing place. Could totally love spending the day there. -Romeo Osorio
Surprisingly an age old concept of softscape on top of rooflines...It's nice to see a rebirth of the juxtaposition of nature against the simple lines of a manmade structure!
A look at what we can only hope future design will be like, architecture and nature working as one. Functional, sustainable, and beautiful in its own simple way! Good choice!!!
I love how our human need to be surrounded by nature leads us to keep bringing the outdoors in and the indoors out. This is one of many great example how technology and great design are helping us accomplish just that.
A very unique and interesting place. The fresh planted landscape is so interesting of surrounded gardens, very cool and great design.
—Tiffany Le
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