Archinect - News

Delugan Meissl completes Taiyuan Botanical Garden featuring timber-based domed greenhouses

2021-06-02T19:16:00-04:00

Vienna-based firm Delugan Meissl Associated Architects (DMAA) has completed the Taiyuan Botanical Garden, a project that introduces a vibrant artificial landscape, defined by three timber-based, domed greenhouses.

Located in Taiyuan, China, the botanical garden occupies the site of a former coal mine, which the client wanted to transform into a landscaped park and museum. The architectural concept is based on the pre-existing landscape and altogether balances the natural landscape, architecture, technological, and ecological solutions. The artificial landscape features hills, lakes, waterfalls, paths, and buildings.

The greenhouses are the project’s centerpiece, fostering suitable climates for plants from different regions. In addition, the botanical garden encompasses an entrance building, which contains a nature museum and administration facility, a restaurant tea house, a bonsai museum, and a research center.

The greenhouses are situated near the entrance of the site and are con...

New York Botanical Garden to build affordable housing complex in The Bronx

2020-02-12T14:57:00-05:00

The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) and Douglaston Development have announced a plan to build a two-towered, 450-unit affordable housing complex on garden-owned site located one block away from its 250-acre facilities in The Bronx.

Real Estate Weekly explains that the project comes as a result of Douglaston signing a 99-year lease with NYBG for the right to develop the property. The development will bring two 12-story residential towers to the area that will offer below market-rate and senior housing units. The two towers will be connected at ground level by a 20,000-square-foot community-serving grocery store, according to the plan. The site is currently occupied by a collection of brick commercial buildings that include an existing Cherry Valley grocery store that will be relocated during construction and then moved back in as the two-phased project is completed.

Previously on Archinect: "Brooklyn Botanic Garden protests shadow-casting skyscraper with “Fight for Sunlight” exhib...

Brooklyn Botanic Garden protests shadow-casting skyscraper with “Fight for Sunlight” exhibition

2019-08-01T16:08:00-04:00

A proposed mixed-use development slated for a site beside the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) in New York City has BBG officials worried that the shadows created by the project’s twin 39-story towers will deprive the garden’s specimens of vital sunlight.

Gothamist reports that the brewing public battle between BBG and developers Continuum Company and Lincoln Equities reached a new level this week, as BBG debuted its Fight for Sunlight exhibition, a graphics-heavy information campaign designed to convey the magnitude of the damage that could be caused to the institution’s plants were the project to come into being. According to BBG, the garden is “one of the only places in New York City where you can see such a diverse collection of rare plants in bloom year-round.”

View of the five-building greenhouse cluster designed by Davis, Brody and Associates. Image courtesy of Wikimedia user Elisa.rolle.

The 1.4 million-square-foot development is currently undergoing environmental review, accor...

Plans for West 8-designed Houston Botanic Garden met with resistance

2016-02-22T13:42:00-05:00

By the year 2020, however, America’s fourth largest city will be able to claim a “premier” botanic garden all its own in the form of Houston Botanic Garden (HBG). [...] And, as it turns out, some folks living in the neighborhoods abutting the golf course would rather not see a stunning botanic garden designed by the same Dutch landscape architecture firm behind the redevelopment of New York City's Governors Island take its place. And it’s not because they're necessarily gaga over golf.

To learn more about the Houston Botanic Garden master plan, which recently won mayoral approval, click here.