Merit Sustainability – Marie Selby Botanic Gardens Living Energy Access Center – (LEAF)

Marie Selby Botanic Gardens – Living Energy Access Facility (LEAF)

Sarasota, Fla.

Merit Award

Sent by: Willis A. Smith Construction Inc.

Owner: Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

Main design company: Terrestrial partners

General contractor: Willis A. Smith Construction Inc.

Structural Engineer, MEP: ARUP

Architect: Sweet Sparkman Architecture and Interiors

Landscape architect: The Olin studio

The Living Energy Access Facility at Sarasota’s Marie Selby Botanical Gardens is as in harmony with nature as the 80-foot bunya-bunya tree it was designed and built into.

Built with post-tensioned concrete on shallow foundations and stone columns, the team set out to build one of the most sustainable structures of its kind in the world, seeking Living Building Challenge recognition, exceeding the requirements for LEED certifications .

Designed to be hurricane-resistant, the building is powered by a 50,000-square-meter solar array on the fourth floor capable of producing 1.23 gigawatt hours of electricity, enough to power the building and offset nearly 1,000 tons of CO2 annually and qualify the Selby. Gardens as the first complex of net-positive botanical gardens in the world. Stormwater from the campus is filtered into a 140,000-gallon stormwater vault before being circulated through bioswats and returned to Hudson Bayou. The site also includes a nearly 48,000 gallon lily pond with waterfalls.

The 45-acre complex includes a four-story vine-covered parking garage with about 450 parking spaces, as well as several electric vehicle charging stations. Putting a parking garage in the middle of the much-loved gardens was not without its critics, the project team says, but numerous meetings with residents and city officials resulted in a design that complements the world-class botanical garden.