Brooklyn Botanic's New 'Do

Brooklyn Botanic Gardens Visitor Center, Location: Brooklyn NY, Architect: Weiss Manfredi Architects

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Brooklyn has the lowest amount of green space per capita in the United States, after Las Vegas. People visiting the gardens through the main entrance off Washington Avenue will pass a nursery/retail boutique (at right) on their way to the welcome to center (left).

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This aerial shot of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden shows the masterplan for its site, with the visitors' center at top, just below the Neoclassical Brooklyn Museum. Courtesy of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.

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The front gates of the new visitors center with gates that pivot on a central axis, all designed by Weiss/Manfredi. The welcome area is positioned as an "urban gesture" right off Washington Avenue, according to co-founder Michael Manfredi, and you get a sense of "cinematic unfolding" from the street to the garden.

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Manfredi also speaks to the structure's undulating mass, partially nestled into an existing hill in the northeast corner of the site. The "topographical" quality of the nearly two-block-long, curving steel frame structure "evokes the garden's winding pathways."

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Here you can see the beginning stages of a green roof, which will be planted with 40,000 species of plants that change according to the season.

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The entire building is a study in transparency. The south facade looks out over the Japanese hill-and-pond garden, shown here, which is also visible from the back side through the fritted glass walls.

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Weiss/Manfredi co-founder Marion Weiss, center, with Brooklyn Botanic Garden president Scot Medbury at left. Partner Michael Manfredi and project manager Armando Petruccelli not pictured.

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The center's double-height event space is lined in gingko wood harvested from felled trees on the BBG property. Floors of polished concrete are capped with a ceiling (a stylized leaf) that hides a complicated array of beam configurations. The gingko allée on the hill behind the building peeps above the gingko paneling on the interior.

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In addition to the green roof's flora, 60,000 other species will be planted around the building, including water-loving native shrubs and grasses for the soon-to-be rain garden.

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Weiss/Manfredi plotted out the green bathroom tiles according to pixelated photos of the botanic gardens.

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