Design Awards

Vernacular Expression

Hilltop Arboretum is a long-standing and respected horticultural institution that holds a cherished position in the landscaping and gardening community of Baton Rouge - no small group in a place where the growing season spans 10 consecutive months. Even those without much of a green thumb can find a place in this community.

The Arboretum owes its special position to its founders, Emory and Annette Smith, and their dedication to nature and their willingness to share its wonders. In the late 1940s the Smiths purchased a rural hilltop property south of Baton Rouge as a working farm and country retreat. As they tended and cleared their land, Annette could not bear to discard some redbud tree seedlings. Instead, she began a nursery with them. Soon the redbuds were joined by other native plants. Her husband then decided to design a cathedral-like garden where "those whose load has become too heavy might work and feel the healing touch of Nature, a world full of enchantment, full of beauty and poetry." Over the years, this openness and love of nature engendered in Hilltop's visitors a devotion to the Smiths' property and the couple's vision for it. Many of those visitors organized "The Friends of Hilltop," a group committed to developing the land in accordance with the Smith's vision. It was this organization that began the initiative to fund and develop the design and construction of the visitor center.

According to Janet Forbes, Hilltop's then-director, the group faced the challenge of ensuring that any building erected on the site would be sympathetic to the principles of the Arboretum. This challenge was addressed in their choice of Lake/Flato Architects, a firm that has built a body of work around a consistent investigation into site-specific architecture. For Lake/Flato such architecture seems to find expression in three ways: first in the reinterpretation of local vernacular form; second in the organization of the program; and third in a judicious use of resources. Despite being Lake/Flato's first excursion into Louisiana, the visitor center successfully continues this fruitful investigation.

In the case of the visitor center, Lake/Flato reinterprets two vernacular building forms, the "shotgun" and the "dogtrot." At first glance, their design follows the shotgun type in its long, thin rectangular shape resting above ground on piers with a single gabled roof running along its length. But a closer look reveals characteristics of the dogtrot, with the long rectangular form split by a covered outdoor open space, making two primary rectangular forms under one roof, and that the building's main entrance is on its broad side within the outdoor space. Their reinterpretation is distinctly modern. For instance, enclosure and structure are separate elements. The columns and beams that support the roof stand free of the two rectangular forms under it. This not only expresses the structure but also creates the illusion that the rectangular forms are floating free in space, particularly because they are raised above the ground.

The use of local vernacular forms not only associates the design with the local culture but also, Ted Flato, FAIA, says, "helps solves issues specific to the relationship of the program to the particulars of its site." The property is rectangular and runs generally north-south with a ravine that extends northward from its southern border. This ravine separates the southeast corner from the rest of the site. Lake/Flato located the visitor center on this corner and aligned the building on a north-south axis running roughly parallel with the ravine. Here, the shotgun's long, thin form effectively serves as a thick wall separating parking on its east side and the main area of the arboretum, just across the ravine, on its west side. The outdoor covered space that is drawn from the dogtrot's form splits the thick wall and becomes a large threshold through which visitors formally enter the arboretum. The visitor center's program resides in the thick wall, flanking the open space of the entry threshold. To one side is the Hilltop Arboretum's office and a gift shop while to the other is a large resource/library room and public restrooms.

The visitor center has been a remarkable success. Tracey Benowetz, Hilltop's current director, says she feels that the building "honors the arboretum by giving it a clear boundary and entry." This is appropriate given the Smiths' vision of nature as hallowed, and as such, must be separated from the more mundane activities of everyday life. Lake/Flato's design clearly delineates between the sacred and the profane while offering a suitably respectful bridge across that divide.

--Jim Sullivan is an assistant professor of architecture at Louisiana State University

RESOURCES
pre-fabricated wood joints and trusses: Southern Components; metal roofing: MBCI; entrances and storefronts: Kawneer; plastic glazing: Polygal