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Brooklyn Botanic Garden Yields Coveted Design Kudos

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The Brooklyn Botanic Garden has won the 2014 American Institute of Architects Award for Architecture. The prize-winning structure which was awarded is the facility’s Visitor Center, according to a press release issued by the BBG.

The center opened in May of 2012 and is one of the city’s energy-conscious, “green” buildings. The award-winning designers of the structure are Michael Mandfredi and Marion Weiss, design partners at Weiss/Manfredi.

The two designers issued the following statement from their firm: “We envisioned the visitor center as a living interface that creates an invitation from the city into the garden – a demonstration of the compelling reciprocity between architecture and landscape. Just as the garden inspires wandering, we designed the center so that it is never seen in its entirety but is experienced cinematically as an unfolding place of discovery.”

The Visitor Center is 20,000-square-feet and was designed as part of BBG’s renewal efforts, launched during the garden’s centennial. The building transitions from a glass-walled architectural presence on Washington Avenue to a sinuous structure with a living roof that becomes a seamless extension of the BBG’s 52-acre landscape.

The leaf-shaped living room hosts over 40,000 plants, from grasses to spring bulbs and perennial wildflowers.

The curved glass walls of the Visitor Center offer veiled views into the garden, their fritted glass filtering light and deterring bird strikes. In contrast to the southern face of the building, the north side is built into a preexisting berm, which increases thermal efficiency. Its clerestory glazing, along with the fritted glass on the south walls, minimizes heat gain and maximizes natural illumination. A geoexchange system heats and cools the interior spaces and a series of rain gardens collect and filter runoff to improve storm-water management.

Scot Medbury, president of BBG, said in a statement: “We were delighted to learn that BBG’s Visitor Center was honored by the American Institute of Architects with this prestigious national award. We knew, even early in the design stages with Weiss/Manfredi, that this project would be a transformative architectural presence for the Garden and the surrounding neighborhood. We are proud to now have the Visitor Center recognized with such an important distinction.”

According to Institute jury members, who issued the award, “The Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center is quite wonderful – simple and exquisite … It is a ribbon of a building, integrating roof, pedestrian experience and city context.”

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