Botanical Garden

In 2015 SAA was chosen as one of 12 architects to represent the United States at the 2016 Venice Biennale. On the site of the Albert Kahn designed Packard Factory, we have proposed an urban island and Vertical Botanical Garden. The complex is too large to be conceived as a single building. Instead, we reconceived the ruined factory buildings as a landscape: a new ground for development. The result is less a building and more an urban fragment. Like the city itself it can grow over time, incorporating the contributions of many agents while maintaining a consistency of type and morphology.