Longwood Gardens, a botanical garden with about 1,100 acres in Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley, recently announced plans to transform its core area of conservatory gardens. Across 17 acres, the $250 million project will include expanded gardens and public spaces as well as new buildings.
Dubbed Longwood Reimagined: A New Garden Experience, the project originated with a master plan developed in 2010 by West 8 with Weiss/Manfredi. Longwood has continued working with Weiss/Manfredi as lead designer, in collaboration with Reed Hilderbrand, on Longwood Reimagined. The project is managed by Bancroft Construction.
The centerpiece and largest element of Longwood Reimagined is a new 32,000-square-foot glasshouse, designed by Weiss/Manfredi, with gardens and pools designed by Reed Hilderbrand. With asymmetrical peaks, the West Conservatory will seem to float on water. Inside, the garden will comprise seasonally changing islands amid pools, canals, and low fountains. Building on the 19th-century tradition of glasshouses, the West Conservatory will include operable glass walls and roof.
Longwood’s Cascade Garden is being entirely relocated to a new, 3,800-square-foot glasshouse of its own. An outdoor Bonsai Courtyard will be built alongside the West Conservatory. A public restaurant and private event space will be carved into the topography facing the Main Fountain Garden. And above the restaurant and event space, the South Terrace and South Walk will provide a shady promenade extending along the conservatories to the West Terrace, with views toward the Brandywine’s meadows.
Other elements of the Longwood Reimagined project include the construction of an education and administration building with a library and classrooms, the renewal of the Waterlily Court, and the relocation and preservation of six historic Lord & Burnham glasshouses from the early 20th century.
Building Team:
Owner: Longwood Gardens
Design architect: Weiss/Manfredi, Reed Hilderbrand (landscape)
Architect of record: Weiss/Manfredi
MEP engineer: Jaros, Baum & Bolles
Structural engineer: Magnusson Klemencic Associates
General contractor/construction manager: Bancroft Construction
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Dallas Center for the Performing Arts opens
The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, a new multi-venue center for music, opera, theater, and dance, will open this month, completing the 25-year vision of the Dallas Arts District. Foster + Partners, Rem Koolhaas, Joshua Prince-Ramus, and Skidmore Owings & Merrill are among the architecture firms involved in the development, which includes four venues unified by a 10-acre park.
| Aug 11, 2010
Polshek unveils design for University of North Texas business building
New York City-based architect Polshek Partnership unveiled its design scheme for the $70 million Business Leadership Building at the University of North Texas in Denton. Designed to provide UNT’s 5,600-plus business majors with a state-of-the-art learning environment, the 180,000-sf facility will include an open atrium, an internet café, and numerous study and tutoring rooms—al...
| Aug 11, 2010
School district plans net-zero building
Camas (Wash.) School District is planning to utilize one of three energy sources—photovoltaics, wind turbine, or geothermal—to help take its new community high school completely off the grid. The school district commissioned Interface Engineering to explore all three options for the project, which is scheduled to break ground in August.
| Aug 11, 2010
Cooper Union academic building designed to reach LEED Platinum
Morphosis Architects and Gruzen Samton are collaborating on an ultra-green academic building for New York’s Cooper Union that is designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification. The program for the nine-story facility mixes state-of-the-art laboratories, classrooms, a multipurpose auditorium, and a range of public and social spaces.
| Aug 11, 2010
LA high school takes design cue from historic Mexican architecture
The Los Angeles Unified School District recently opened the $75 million Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center, a high school in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights, near Little Tokyo. Designed by Nadel Architects in a joint venture with Barrio Planners Inc., the 114,000-sf school is vertically integrated, allowing the campus to fit on a compact, six-acre site.
| Aug 11, 2010
Take the hassle out of managing subcontractors
As general contractors look to technology for an edge in the slowing commercial construction market, Web-based bidding programs are helping them to connecting bid information, subcontractors, and proposals. A 2008 survey by the Construction Financial Management Association found that 62% of general contractors participated in Web-based construction bidding vs.
| Aug 11, 2010
Toronto mandates green roofs
The city of Toronto late last month passed a new green roof by-law that consists of a green roof construction standard and a mandatory requirement for green roofs on all classes of new buildings. The by-law requires up to 50% green roof coverage on multi-unit residential dwellings over six stories, schools, nonprofit housing, and commercial and industrial buildings.
| Aug 11, 2010
Carpenters' union helping build its own headquarters
The New England Regional Council of Carpenters headquarters in Dorchester, Mass., is taking shape within a 1940s industrial building. The Building Team of ADD Inc., RDK Engineers, Suffolk Construction, and the carpenters' Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee, is giving the old facility a modern makeover by converting the existing two-story structure into a three-story, 75,000-sf, LEED-certif...
| Aug 11, 2010
TCF Bank Stadium first new football stadium to get LEED certification
The University of Minnesota has received LEED Silver certification for its 50,805-seat TCF Bank Stadium, making it the first new football stadium in the country to achieve LEED status. Designed by Populous, Kansas City, Mo., the facility features a stormwater management system that captures and stores rainwater in an underground filtering system, where it is harvested, filtered, and drained int...
| Aug 11, 2010
Nursing home turned charter school opens in Dorchester, Mass.
Cambridge, Mass.-based HMFH Architects spearheaded the design for the conversion of a former nursing home in Dorchester, Mass., to learning and community space for the Neighborhood House Charter School. The pre-K—8 school has two classrooms for each elementary grade level, clusters of middle school classrooms, a cafeteria, media center, and art, computer, music and science classrooms.
