Padova Botanical Gardens

Status: 2013
Location: Italy

Client: Universita' degli Studi di Padova
Value: €9.5m

 

New glasshouses, exhibition spaces, outdoor planted areas and visitor facilities for Padua Botanic Garden, established in 1545 and now a World Heritage Site

Stanton Williams were unanimously selected from a shortlist of fifteen international practices to expand the ‘Hortus Botanicus Patavinus’, the first botanic garden in the world, established at the University of Padua in 1545 and now a World Heritage Site. Our design provides five glasshouses (each accommodating a different climatic zone) as well as new exhibition areas, outdoor parterres, and other visitor facilities, all on an extremely sensitive site. In parallel with this work, our collaborators VS Associati are working to conserve the historic garden.

Our design is closely rooted in the garden’s historic fabric and urban context. The new glasshouses are positioned to one side of the site, creating an open area that forms a foreground for views of the nearby Basilica of Santa Giustina.

Their diminishing height responds to the requirements of their different climates, with the tallest volume housing the lush greenery of the tropics and the smallest being the sub-arctic zone; the wedge-like form created by the single roof that links the volumes offers a foil to the historic garden’s circular enclosure whilst also deferring to the Basilica. Woven between the glasshouses is space for display, while a tunnel-like gallery concludes the sequence by exploring the theme of taking plants into space. The linear beds and pools of the outdoor areas, meanwhile, reimagine the site’s historic irrigation canals and planting. In this way, the design simultaneously celebrates the past whilst inviting visitors to consider the future of the global ecosystem.

 

Credits
Associate Architect: VS Associati
Services Engineering: Sint Ingegneria
Stuctural Engineering: Simoncello Associati
Hydro-geological: Ingeo