Project Details
- Project Name
- Longwood Gardens West Conservatory
- Location
- PA
- Client/Owner
- Longwood Gardens
- Project Types
- Cultural
- Project Scope
- New Construction
- Size
- 32,000 sq. feet
- Shared by
- Madeleine D'Angelo
- Project Status
- On the Boards/In Progress
- Cost
- $60,000,000
This project was named an Merit winner in the 70th Annual Progressive Architecture Awards, and was featured in the March 2023 issue of ARCHITECT.
“I feel like we’re going to have a lot more architecture like this that is built to house living things. It’s already happening. I felt like this was an interesting way of doing that.” —Juror DK Osseo-Asare
Longwood Gardens has long been a tourist destination for landscape aficionados in the southeast Pennsylvania town of Kennett Square. And now, thanks to New York–based Weiss/Manfredi, visitors will have a new reason to stop by: The firm is building the Longwood Gardens West Conservatory to replace a series of outmoded greenhouses with a dramatic recasting of the traditional glass house form. This is definitely not your father’s crystal palace. Exploration, education, culture, and recreation are the programming demands for the new, 32,000-square-foot facility, which is designed to support and display horticultural elements that thrive in extreme hot and/or wet climates. Beyond the facility’s walls, a rectangular pool provides the datum for the new structure. The visitor experience occurs on paths that float like islands amid a series of canals, tucked underneath an undulating canopy of pleated glass roofs that sit atop distinctive Y-shaped columns. The steel frames maintain consistent radius and bends, varying only the length of the legs to create the swooping rooflines.
PROJECT CREDITS
Project: Longwood Gardens West Conservatory, Kennett Square, Pa.
Client/Owner: Longwood Gardens
Architect: WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, New York. Marion Weiss, FAIA, and Michael A. Manfredi, FAIA, (co-founders); Todd Hoehn (principal and project manager); Joseph Vessel, Heather McArthur, Andrew Ruggles, Justin Kwok (senior project architects and team leaders); Eileen Witte, Sergio Saucedo, Tomoko Akiba, Jackie Krasnokutskaya, Scott Chung, Don David, Mike Harshman, Andreas Hausler, Matthew Ferraro, Thomas Baker, Kelly Beckman, and Kerry O’Connor (design team)
Landscape Architect: Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture. Douglas Reed (principal and partner); Kristin Fredrickson (associate principal); Eric Kramer (principal and partner); Jeremy Martin (senior associate)
Construction Management Company: Bancroft Construction Company
Civil Engineer: Pennoni Associates
M/E/P Consulting Engineer: Jaros Baum & Bolles
Structural: Magnussen Klemencic Associates
Preservation Consultant: John Milner Architects
Environmental Design Consultant: Atelier Ten
Lighting: Tillotson Design Associates
Size: 32,000 square feet
Cost: $60,000,000
This post has been updated.