A closer look at the winning Wynwood Greenhouse garden park to be built in Miami

The Wynwood Greenhouse blends the native landscape and the interior domestic space of a home together under one cozy, open-aired roof. Collaboratively designed by architect Nick Gelpi, landscape architect Roberto Rovira, and artist Jim Drain, Wynwood Greenhouse recently won 1st place in DawnTown's Wynwood Gateway Park Competition. The challenge invited creative teams worldwide to design a 14,000-sq.ft urban park and garden for the Wynwood Gateway Complex near Downtown Miami in Florida.

The Wynwood Greenhouse will be constructed and implemented as part of the second phase for the Wynwood Gateway Complex development.

Read on for further project details that the designers shared with us.

Project description:

"A GREENHOUSE? The Wynwood Greenhouse Park is an open-air framework, which inverts the normative relationship between interior domestic space and the exterior landscape. This park places the native landscape under a playful roof and welcomes wildlife inside the exaggerated form of a domestic house. In this way the structure acts as a folly, for interaction with nature, formally housing it within its walls.

ROOF: The design features an undulating roof structure with two roof-peaks which reference the two single family homes which previously existed on the site. As the two roofs merge and interact, pitching and warping, they blend into a playful hovering roofscape, relying on the familiar domestic roof shapes of peaks, dormers and eaves. This roofscape is an ultra-thin, open-air, shade-structure echoing the delicateness of the native butterflies which call the park home. The hovering structural pattern of the roofscape provides a dynamic play of shadows over the landscape growing within which provides a rich and engaging habitat for native flora and fauna, and park visitors alike."

"COLLABORATIVE STRUCTURE: This lightweight framework additionally serves as a system for collaborative interaction, as the 3 collaborative disciplines of art, architecture, and landscape, fill into the empty frames, various components which make up the mosaic of park space. 

BUTTERFLY GARDEN:  Miami is home to many colorful native butterflies. An exclusive array of lush native plantings are selected to specifically attract butterflies to the greenhouse park. These specific landscapes flank the east and west walls. One side of the structure consists primarily of nectar plants for butterflies while the other is filled with host plants to showcase the entire life cycle of a butterfly garden unlike any other."

"MOUNDS:  Soft native grasses and wildflowers clustered on two mounds are reminiscent of the subtle rise of tree islands or cypress domes found within the nearby Everglades and provide elevated topography from the adjacent grade. The site’s existing and centrally located oak tree is preserved. Not only does it establish meaningful continuity with the site’s existing landscape, but it provides welcome shade together with the delicate metal structure above whose open air canopy frames the clouds."

FURNITURE: The idea of the park within the domestic space is echoed as human furniture is juxtaposed against the landscape in various ways. Pocket benches are carved out of the three-foot thick perimeter walls. Cut benches are carved into the massive butterfly mounds, and communal swings are suspended from the roof, creating places for visitors to experience weightlessness, by hovering above the ground with the butterflies. Additionally there are large rearrange-able sets of seating, scattered organically along the walls like living room furniture."

"MODULAR GARDEN: Modular gabions change the density of the walls from porous concrete at the base, to planted walls that open up airy views to the sky. These modular butterfly planters serve as prototypes which could be distributed throughout other sites in the neighborhood helping to restore the butterflies’ habitat. Each growing-gabion is a specific butterfly host or nectar plant creating a mosaic like landscape and ecology. Built-in irrigation and misting systems create welcome microclimates throughout the year."

"VISIBILITY: The north and south facades allow easy views in and out, framing the activities of the adjacent street and controlling access to the park during off hours with a light mesh and a shaggy, planted front door. The north and south edges of the project dissolve towards the middle to underscore the continuity of a north-south axis of public space which manifests itself outside through the use of colorful bollards and newly painted crosswalks that echo the patterns of the Greenhouse canopy."

"GREENHOUSE:  The Greenhouse is a park which doesn’t just carve out new space, but builds a new type of park space for people and nature to thrive. This new space acknowledges both, the native landscape, as well as the native architectural cityscape of its site blending both into a dynamic space of overlaps."

Project credits

TEAM:  A design collaboration between Architect-Nick Gelpi(GELPI-Projects), Landscape Architect-Roberto Rovira(Studio Roberto Rovira), and Artist-Jim Drain.

Click the thumbnails below for more images.