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Design Consultant: BKSK Architects LLP
Location: Queens
Client Agency: Cepartment of Cultural Affair
Overview: The new Administration Building and Visitor’s Center is a tangible demonstration of the Queens Botanical Garden’s dual mission of encouraging environmental stewardship and celebrating the neighborhood’s cultural diversity. The building is at once a gateway to the gardens, a defining edge for the nearby residential community, and an integration of natural garden and built form. The program encompasses culturally significant plant displays, new gardens showcasing native plant communities and water management, an auditorium, indoor and outdoor meeting areas and public amenities. The building houses new facilities for the horticulture and maintenance departments, and a new home for visitor services and administration.
Sustainable Features: Because of its unusually ambitious sustainability agenda, the design won NYC’s first Green Building Design Award in 2004 and it expects to earn the highest and rarely awarded LEED Platinum from the US Green Building Council. But the project wears its environmental effectiveness lightly, conveying its green values in an elegant and poetic manner, and drawing one’s attention to the earth, water, air, and light. A green meadow sweeps up from the ground to cover the partially buried auditorium, while a folded roof shelters the plaza and directs collected rain water to a man-made stream that is cleansed by the biological processes of the plants. The project’s most impressive achievements are in the areas of sustainable site design and water efficiency, both reflecting and demonstrating the core values of the botanical garden that it serves.
Located in Flushing Queens. Size: 16,000 gross square feet / 13,900 net square feet in a campus setting. Construction cost of $14,000,000. Building completion Spring 2007 (Design commenced 1999).
Client Agencies: Queens Botanical Garden, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs; NYC Department of Design & Construction.
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Healthy Interiors
Results
 Optimized fresh air quantities
Building systems and occupants protected from construction contaminants
Reduced exposure to toxins, volatile organic compounds, urea formaldehyde
Daylight to 78% of rooms, and views outside for 90%
Occupant-controlled lighting, heating and cooling
Strategies
CO2 monitors control fresh air
Air quality management during construction
Specifications for low-emitting paints, carpets, adhesives, sealants, non-urea-
formaldehyde composite woods
Separate ventilation for interior service areas
Expansive glazing, operable windows, and occupant controls for thermal
comfort
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