On November 6, Brooklyn Botanic Garden opened the Robert W. Wilson Overlook, designed by WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism. Wolf Landscape Architecture designed the Overlook’s plantings, which introduce over 40,000 plants into the Garden’s collection.
Taking design cues from the adjacent Diane H. and Joseph S. Steinberg Visitor Center — another project designed by WEISS/MANFREDI and the winner of over 20 design awards — the Overlook has been reimagined, reconstructed, and replanted in its entirety to create an immersive landscape that brings new life to one of BBG’s most extraordinary vistas.
Together with the Visitor Center’s living roof and the Native Flora Garden, the Overlook completes a nearly continuous ribbon of meadow-inspired plantings, each part a distinct response to its site and to the Garden’s mission. Gathering grasses and perennials from across North America, it combines their diverse survival strategies to form a robust, resilient ecosystem that will evolve over time, inviting a diversity of insect life while building healthy soils.
The Overlook’s striking visual planes and ever-evolving landscape will add to the Garden’s inherent drama through four seasons.
New York Magazine covered the opening.
The Overlook, foreground, takes design cues from the Garden’s visitor center, background, also designed by WEISS/MANFREDI.