ENR Best Project elevates Garden’s visitor experience

This episode examines the Missouri Botanical Garden’s new Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center in St. Louis, winner of ENR’s National 2024 Best of the Best Project Award in the cultural category. The LEED Gold project houses an event center, gift shop, meeting spaces, restaurant, and auditorium, and included the renovation of the historic Linnean House, the oldest continuously operated public greenhouse west of the Mississippi. Insight into the project is provided by guests Zach Carter of IMEG and Deniz Piskin, Vice President for Facilities and Construction at the Missouri Botanical Garden. 

The decision to build the new center was largely driven by continual growth in the number of annual visitors; last year 1.3 million people visited the Garden, far more than the previous center could have comfortably accommodated. “The way the original visitor center was constructed, there were a lot of little bottlenecks in getting visitors through the center and into the garden,” Deniz says.

The overall visitor experience was the other focus of the project. In addition to the vastly improved entrance and its accessibility, upon entering the new center, visitors are immersed in natural light as they view the exterior gardens through the facility’s south wall of windows. An architectural lantern, or skylight, in the lobby includes a custom-designed scrim perforated in a pattern inspired by tree canopies. These and many other biophilic elements bring the outdoors in. “Everywhere you look, there's something related to nature,” says Deniz.

Hidden from sight are the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, and technology systems designed by IMEG. Key features include a 50,000-gallon rainwater collection cistern to provide water for the plants in the greenhouse (botanical garden staff consider rain “liquid gold”); displacement ventilation/natural stratification in the 50-foot tall lobby to improve occupant comfort; rooftop solar arrays; and a generator devoted to providing backup power to maintain the appropriate climate for the greenhouse, which features a variety of plants from the Mediterranean.

Collaboration among all stakeholders was integral to the design-assist project, which was completed in multiple phases and included the construction of a temporary visitor center to keep the Garden open to visitors throughout construction.

Deniz advises other organizations contemplating such a milestone project to “start with a clear understanding of what your goals and objectives are and check back throughout the design process to ensure you are not deviating from your goals. That's what this team did. We always kept in mind our visitors, always kept in mind the visitor experience.”

See photos of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center and read the IMEG project case study. For further information and photographs, read this feature published by Metropolis.