ENTRY PLAZA AT THE BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN VISITOR CENTER
ALBERT VEZERKA / ESTO
Less than four years ago the Washington Avenue parking lot was the most interesting thing happening behind McKim, Mead & White’s magisterial Brooklyn Museum. Replacing a lone turnstile and guard’s hut with a series of glass-wrapped, green-capped pavilions and a plaza, the new Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) Visitor Center by New York–based Weiss/Manfredi is a sight for sore eyes. Nestled within a rich context and history—the nearby Prospect Park was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in the late 19th century and the Gardens by his two sons in the early 20th—the Center’s most impressive feature, its steel-frame design, is also its most vital. The custom-made structure forms a curving vertebrae that is formally elegant and light on the ground, yet structurally robust.
“The building is seen as a series of threshold spaces you move through, not stay at,” said Michael Manfredi, principal of Weiss/Manfredi. Designed as a gateway, the building employs a common Olmstedian device of a path to draw visitors through a sequence of enclosed and open spaces into the Cherry Esplanade. The center rises from one story at the front to a double-height at the rear in an arrangement of coated steel, fritted glass, and pale concrete that weaves in plan and section within its surrounding environment. In keeping with the firm’s philosophy of creating architecture that exists in concert with the landscape, the 29 hollow steel section (HSS) rigid frames allow for a surprising degree of flexibility and diversity of spaces and structural supports.