As part of a master plan initiated in 2010, Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, announced today its plans for transforming 17 acres of its botanical gardens, woodlands, and meadows. The New York firm of Weiss/Manfredi are the architects at the helm of new buildings, outdoor spaces, and refined connections between its east and west precincts, in association with landscape architect Reed Hilderbrand of Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

The design team’s signature addition is a 32,000-square-foot glass conservatory that appears to float on top of pools and plantings. The ethereal new West Conservatory is a modern companion to the “mineral expression,” as architect Marion Weiss says, of the traditional East and Main Conservatories—separate but connected buildings. The new structure’s pleated roofline undulates, creating forced perspectives and recalling the surrounding Brandywine Valley’s topography. The building’s hovering expression will be achieved in part by four sets of graceful tree-like steel columns. Operable glass walls and roof gills will provide passive ventilation, and a series of underground earth tubes will draw fresh air in and up through the conservatory.