The new visitor center for New York City's Brooklyn Botanic Garden is conceived as an inhabitable topography defining a threshold between the city and the garden. To provoke curiosity and interest in the world-class collection, the new building will provide a legible point of arrival and orientation, an interface between garden and city, culture and cultivation.

The design of the visitor center is seen as a seamless extension of the landscape. Nested into an existing berm, the center is exper...