Phipps Conservatory Garden Center

A regenerative design process transforms a world-renowned conservatory’s garden center into a Living Building that connects America’s “Iron City” to its natural legacy.

Built in 1893, the Phipps Conservatory is one of the nation’s oldest and largest public gardens. Originally established as a verdant respite from the steel mills and factories that once dominated the region, it is now a leading force in Pittsburgh’s transformation from a city of industry to a city of regeneration. The Conservatory’s Garden Center is located in the former carriage house of the estate of industrialist Richard B. Mellon, which sits at the intersection of some of the city’s most affluent and economically depressed neighborhoods.

To transform the Garden Center into an inclusive, engaging, and inspiring community asset, Phipps is using deep green and high-performance construction strategies. The renovated, expanded facility will host educational programming, events, a shop, and a café.

As part of a design team led by Rosthschild Doyno Collaborative, Biohabitats led water infrastructure visioning and detailed engineering for onsite water treatment and rainwater harvesting to ensure that the project meets the rigorous standards of the Living Building Challenge’s Net Positive Water Imperative. The goal is to harvest, treat, and reuse all water that falls on, flows into, or is used by the facility on site. The project is unique not only for its ambitious sustainability goals, but for the biophilic process being employed to design it. Facilitated by the 7Group, that process began by immersing the design team in the landscape and examining the patterns of nature existing within it.

The project transforms a building long associated with industry into a state-of-the-art facility that celebrates, regenerates, and connects people to nature.