Although the roof plane of the visitor center is composed of tw…
Although the roof plane of the visitor center is composed of two different materials to distinguish the pavilions on the urban and garden edges of the site, the surfaces are united by a theme: “We have two green roofs,” Marion Weiss says. “One is copper [which will oxidize] … and the other is planted.”
Washington Avenue façade, which the architects call the only ov…
Washington Avenue façade, which the architects call the only overtly architectural face.
On the ground plane, visitors move through the building via a sh…
On the ground plane, visitors move through the building via a shaded breezeway that moves past ticketing and creates a choreographed entry sequence into the gardens.
The southern face of the building has a sinuous curve, dsigned i…
The southern face of the building has a sinuous curve, dsigned in part to reflect the shape of the garden's rare green-flowering cherry tree.
The building culminates at the western edge in a leaf-shaped eve…
The building culminates at the western edge in a leaf-shaped event space partially embedded into the berm beyond. An exterior stair wraps this space and gives visitors access to the roof terrace.
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center's undulating planted …
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center's undulating planted roof makes it blend seemlessly with the landscape.
The planted green roof on the western pavilion not only serves a…
The planted green roof on the western pavilion not only serves as a laboratory for BBG’s horticulturists, but also allows the building to merge with the surrounding landscape—so much so that from certain angles, the roof is virtually indistinguishable from the natural ground plane.
The northern edge of the visitor center is embedded into a berm….
The northern edge of the visitor center is embedded into a berm. Visiors can access this higher ground, with its terraced seating and access points to the surrounding garden environments, via the exterior staircase on the other side fo the building.
The curving exhibition gallery terminates in the leaf-shaped eve…
The curving exhibition gallery terminates in the leaf-shaped event space, which is lined with milled ginkgo boards harvested from one of the few trees that had to be felled in
order to make way for the
new building.
Event space, with a view through the clerestory to the roof terr…
Event space, with a view through the clerestory to the roof terrace above.
For the last 102 years, the month of May at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) has meant the arrival of spring blooms. This year, May brought something else: a new 22,000-square-foot, $28 million visitor center. With growing attendance (a typical 10-week springtime surge sees 500,000 people pass through its gates), BBG needed a more efficient way of welcoming and orienting crowds. So, in 2004, it hired New York–based Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism—and the firm’s trademark expertise in merging landscape with buildings—to design a new gateway to the gardens.
Weiss/Manfredi carefully crafted two sinuous pavilions (one for events and exhibitions and the other for a gift shop), stitched together by a ribbon of shaded breezeway. The entrance is marked by an expansive plaza—paved with a local mix of concrete and dotted with custom benches—that allows for the kind of urban experience the institution prizes. Three planted gardens that flank the building help capture rainwater runoff.
“There’s a big elasticity in visitor numbers,” explains BBG president Scot Medbury, citing a Mother’s Day attendance of 37,000 but fewer people in colder months. The plaza works to accommodate a full range of numbers—big enough to handle crowds, but intimate enough to not seem barren on a quiet day.
The plaza narrows as part peels off and feeds into the breezeway that curves between the gift shop on one side and the ticket window on the other. After buying tickets, visitors amble through the curved exhibition space or along the pathway beside it, which is shaded by a canopy that hugs the building perimeter. At the terminus of the exhibition hall is a leaf-shaped event space whose garden side is clad in floor-to-ceiling glass. Since its other side is partially embedded into a berm, Weiss/Manfredi finished the opaque wall with ginkgo panels milled from a tree that had to be felled in order to make way for construction. An ample clerestory frames a view of the allée of ginkgo trees that crowns the berm, visually serving up that species in two forms.
The stretched elliptical event space is sandwiched between two discrete outdoor areas. Along the glass wall, a terrace provides space for visitors to congregate and for BBG to host outdoor events. On the other, bermed, edge, stepped terraces—accessed by an exterior stair that wraps the event space and feeds visitors to a passage that cuts through the building—lead up to the ginkgo allée.
The project’s mastery is to be found in the way it manages to assert itself by providing a legible system of organization, while allowing for certain slippages to occur (most notably, between the urban and botanical). “The city seeps into the garden,” says principal Marion Weiss, FAIA, “and the garden seeps into the city.”
“It’s a building that wanders, which you never really see in its entirety,” Weiss says. Rather than passing a definitive threshold, visitors glide from the sidewalk, past the ticket window, then down one of several curved paths. This experiential fluidity is formalized on the roof, where the event space is capped by a planted roof while the gift shop’s urban edge—the one elevation that the architects deem overtly architectural—is covered by a pleated copper roof.
The sigmoidal roof visually stitches together the garden’s tranquility with the bustle of Washington Avenue, but it also makes broader associations. BBG’s offices are housed in a McKim, Mead & White building with a now-patinated copper roof, so from certain points in and out of the gardens, the visitor center’s two roofs are visible from a single vantage. And while the planted roof pays obvious homage to the gardens that surround it, Weiss/Manfredi places it into a matrix of subtle perspectival relationships. From certain angles, the building seems to disappear altogether as the glazed wall becomes shrouded behind the garden’s vegetation: the mounding vegetated roof looks like just another berm.
Another relationship that the building mediates is that of the architectural history of the greenhouse. Weiss/Manfredi includes subtle references to this 19th-century invention with vertical frits on glazed surfaces and the thin white filaments of the entry plaza gates. But unlike the greenhouse’s typological origin, which is steeped in colonialism and aristocracy, Weiss/Manfredi’s nod to this type is driven by access and inclusiveness, effectively undoing its privileged status.
As BBG sets out on what it calls a “Campaign for the Next Century”—which includes the visitor center and a redesigned entrance by Architecture Research Office—it highlights the importance of design in defining an institutional identity. “Environmental design has never been more important than it is today in enhancing the success of cultural institutions of all sizes,” Medbury says. “Excellent architects are essential partners.”
Project Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center, Brooklyn, N.Y. Client Brooklyn Botanic Garden Architect Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, New York—Michael A. Manfredi, FAIA, Marion Weiss, FAIA (design partners); Armando Petruccelli (project architect/manager); Hamilton Hadden, Justin Kwok (project architects); Christopher Ballentine, Cheryl Baxter, Michael Blasberg, Paúl Duston-Muñoz, Michael Steiner (project team); Patrick Armacost, Jeremy Babel, Caroline Emerson, Eleonora Flammini, Kian Goh, Michael Harshman, AIA, Aaron Hollis, Hanul Kim, Hyoung-Gul Kook, Lee Lim, Jonathan Schwartz, Na Sun, Jie Tian, Yoonsun Yang (additional team members) Structural and Civil Engineer Weidlinger Associates Consulting Engineers M/E/P/FP/IT Engineers Jaros, Baum and Bolles Consulting Engineers Landscape Consultant HM White Site Architecture Glazing Consultant R.A. Heintges & Associates Sustainability/Commissioning Consultant Viridian Energy and Environmental Geothermal/Geotechnical Consultant Langan Engineering and Environmental Lighting Consultant Brandston Partnership Acoustical/Audiovisual/Security Consultant Cerami & Associates/TM Technology Exhibit Consultant Thinc Food Service Consultant Ricca Newmark Design Building and Fire Code Consultant Code Consultants Concrete Consultant Reginald Hough Waterproofing Consultant James R. Gainfort Retail Consultant Jeanne Giordano Building Department Consultant Design 2147 Specifications Consultant Construction Specifications Construction Management LiRo Group General Contractor E.W. Howell Size 22,000 gross square feet Cost $28 million (total construction cost)
![Although the roof plane of the visitor center is composed of two different materials to distinguish the pavilions on the urban and garden edges of the site, the surfaces are united by a theme: “We have two green roofs,” Marion Weiss says. “One is copper [which will oxidize] … and the other is planted.”](https://architectmagazine.prd.zonda.onl/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/06/tmp3772-2etmp-tcm20-1440629.jpg?w=245)
