[ad_1]
Spiral roofs, 60-foot waterfalls, ‘dinosaur trees’ — how architects are breathing new life into Winnipeg’s greenest attraction
In the early 20th century, it became popular in North American cities to build greenhouses to display tropical plant species, no matter how non-tropical the location. Winnipeg’s version is the Palm House, a botanical garden filled with exotic foliage in Assiniboine Park. But by 2009, the once popular brick and concrete building had aged and turned into a dilapidated energy guzzler. When the Assiniboine Park Authority asked Winnipeggers how to improve the park, they said: keep the plants, replace the buildings, give us a winter escape.
After joining in 2012, KPMB Architects developed a plan to transform the year-round, visitor-attracting greenhouse that would become “Leaf.” The $130 million project now features four indoor plant biomes and more than 12,000 trees, shrubs and flowers from around the world, all housed in an 84,000-square-foot complex with a Fibonacci-like superstructure Spiral, a natural pattern that appears in sunflowers, seashells and hurricanes.
Building a tropical-friendly greenhouse in a climate where temperatures can drop below 40 degrees Fahrenheit is a daunting task. An all-glass structure would be too heavy, so KPMG instead looked at ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), a lightweight plastic built into BC Place Stadium in Vancouver. For inspiration, conservation staff visited the Eden Project in the UK, a collection of ETFE biomes that contain one of the largest indoor rainforests on Earth. Architects have set their sights on Kazakhstan’s Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center, the world’s tallest tensile structure.
ETFE is a difficult material to install when cold. As a result, construction on the Leaf began in the spring of 2017 and didn’t end until nearly five and a half years later. KPMG also asked Austrian-Italian cable company Teufelberger-Redaelli to provide a customized spiral cable mesh, a complex braided structure that supports the entire cable.
There’s plenty of excitement below the roof, too: a new butterfly garden, a restaurant serving produce picked straight from the ground, and a 60-foot waterfall designed by Canadian artist Dan Euser. Ser is the designer of the water feature at the September 11th Memorial Museum in New York City. The Leaf’s eye-catching redesign didn’t just boost attendance. Despite the staff’s best efforts, international stowaways often arrive at the greenhouse in the form of insects and lizards. Some were allowed to stay, while others were housed at another nearby attraction: the Assiniboine Park Zoo.
[ad_2]
Source link