Weiss/Manfredi Projects Win 2012 Chicago Athenaeum Awards

Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center and Hunters Point South Waterfront Park win the 2012 Chicago Athenaeum Green Good Design Award for sustainability and design. Hunters Point South Waterfront Park wins the 2012 Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Award and is a finalist for the International Architecture Award.

The firm's Visitor Center at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, winner of the Award for Excellence in Design by the New York City Public Design Commission, recently opened to the public. The Visitor Center is conceived as a seamless extension of the Garden's path system, the sinuous glass building is embedded in an existing hillside, offering a new sequence of views into and through the Garden. Hunters Point South is envisioned as an international model of urban ecology and a laboratory for innovative sustainable thinking. The project is a collaboration between Thomas Balsley Associates and WEISS/MANFREDI as co-designers of the Open Space and Park and Arup as the Prime Consultant and Infrastructure designer.

Established in the 1990s by The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design together with The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and Metropolitan Arts Press Ltd., the awards program honors and celebrates the most outstanding new achievements and innovations for new architecture. GOOD DESIGN was founded in Chicago in 1950 by Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. to promote and foster a greater public understanding and acceptance for modern design. Led by a current generation of visionary architects, designers, and urban planners, GREEN GOOD DESIGN aims to bring a parallel public awareness to ecological restoration and sustainable practice. The 2012 American Architecture Awards recognize distinguished projects designed and built by leading architecture firms.