The Morris Arboretum’s planned Center for Education, Exhibition, and Horticulture would not be just its first new building since the 19th century. The 34,000-square-feet museum-style, multi-use structure, to be built on the Arboretum’s adjacent Bloomfield Farm property, will also be Penn’s first newly constructed “green” building, with plans to achieve Platinum Level LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification.
The LEED rating system was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council to provide a recognized standard for assessing the environmental sustainability of building designs. If and when that certification occurs,
the Center will be the first new not-for-profit Platinum building in the greater Philadelphia area and only the second Platinum building in Pennsylvania.
The building will be a “celebration of the sense of place of the Wissahickon Valley, echoing the style of an existing 19th-century barn,” says Paul Meyer, the Arboretum’s F. Otto Haas Director.
The design team consists of Overland Partners, a Texas architectural firm; Muscoe Martin (of Philadelphia’s M2 Architecture); and Andropogon Associates, the Arboretum’s landscape planning partner for the past 30 years. Last year the Arboretum received a $5 million state grant to help fund the project.
