Bartram's Garden Visitor Center

The assignment was a continuation of the first, on the same sloping site at Bartram's Garden we were asked to design the landscape of a visitor center complex to supplement the historic garden. 

These drawings were produced using AutoCAD and Illustrator.

Concept Narrative:

 
John Bartram was America’s first great botanist, an explorer of unbridled curiosity and energy.  Like friend and co-founder of the American Philosophical Society, Benjamin Franklin and other learned men of his time, John Bartram, was naturally curious and scientifically inclined. He read and traveled widely layering information, findings and research creating an intricate tapestry. This project, to design the site and landscape for the visitor’s center for John Bartram’s home and garden, aims to capture the many fascinating and enlightened facets of the man and combine them into a single educational and inspiring site to welcome all visitors.

Bartram, as a botanist, divided and organized the land of his estate into parterres, allowing him to study plants collected from his travels around the globe. The intersections of the connecting pathways used to delineate the parterres have been mapped and re-constituted into a point grid over the site of the visitor’s center, unifying the vast, sloping landscape while symbolically tying it back to the garden. The point grid is articulated by vertical architectural elements, upon which vines can be trained to grow. The new circulation path now curves through the site, interacting with these architectural points in various manners, sometimes passing through them, other times alongside them. These two systems represent Bartram’s worldly travels and varying experiences along with his sharp mind and meticulous organization. The grid further begins to suggest the creation of new parterres, articulated by colorful plantings on the ground and gently implied by the connecting horizontal elements, also designed to invite vine growth. A third layering of information is the use of allées of trees, articulated as linear masses to define and connect spaces physically and visually, they act as both frames for views towards the city and as blinders hiding the industrial park across the river.
 

Thus, effectively creating a composite site design with the layering of three independent architectural elements of points, planes and lines, evoked by pylons, parterres and allées to support and enhance the experience of visiting Bartram’s Garden. These systems represent John Bartram’s different areas of interest and can be taken independently, but when composed together provide a new, richer experience.