Welcome Center

To achieve their mission of connecting people with nature, Phipps became interested in building green facilities. This journey began in the late 1990’s when we first learned about LEED and resulted in 2005 with the construction its new Welcome Center. Featuring a revolutionary design that complements the original Victorian conservatory and does not obstruct the historic view of this iconic beauty from the front lawn, the Phipps Welcome Center accommodates Phipps’ admissions area, café, gift shop and other visitor amenities. Fritted glass on the dome and windows filters natural daylight into interior spaces, reducing the need for artificial lighting and a green roof covers most of the building — the building is nestled in the ground providing a heat sink that reduces the energy required to heat and cool the space.

Earning LEED Silver certification, the Welcome Center became the first LEED Certified visitor center in a public garden. It was this process that made Phipps an early leader in the green building space and was Phipps’ entrance to the campus-wide initiative to make every decision, not just building projects, demonstrate the beauty of living in harmony with the natural world. After switching to 100% renewable energy for our entire campus in 2005, the café eliminated disposable serviceware, bottled water, soda, junk food and factory farm meat to create a more environmentally conscious dining experience.

Tropical Forest Conservatory

In sharp contrast to Phipps’ 1893 glasshouse, which was designed with the prevailing technology of the time and relied upon limited passive ventilation systems that poorly regulate interior temperature, the Tropical Forest Conservatory utilizes an unconventional design including massive roof venting and 1800 feet of underground earth tubes, resulting in 40 percent less energy use than traditional glasshouses. It is a greenhouse that has no greenhouse effect. Celebrated for this efficiency when it opened in 2006, the impressive 60-foot-high, 12,000-square-foot Tropical Forest Conservatory takes visitors from Pittsburgh and beyond on a colorful and inspiring journey through some of the most botanically rich regions of the world. Incorporating impactful ethnobotanic displays, cascading waterfalls and lush greenery, this state-of-the-art facility demonstrates how favoring a fresh approach over past conventions can provide solutions to nearly any sustainability challenge.

Production Greenhouse

Adjacent to the Tropical Forest Conservatory is the Production Greenhouse, a 36,000-square-foot facility where horticulturists grown and maintain Phipps’ collection that is not on display. Among the Production Greenhouse’s most notable features is an innovative open-roof system that allows for maximum temperature and ventilation control. The roof vents are tied into an anticipatory control system that ensures that the facility is optimally heated and cooled while taking advantage of natural ventilation, eliminating the need for costly exhaust fans. Energy blankets on the roof can be drawn on cool evenings to prevent heat loss. Water usage is closely monitored and adjusted to minimize impacts during dry spells, and Phipps continually innovates new ways to capture rainwater on site for irrigation. The combination of these strategies allows Phipps’ Production Greenhouse to operate 33 percent more efficiently than similar greenhouses and earned the structure LEED® Platinum for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance, making it the first greenhouse ever to earn LEED certification.

Nature Lab at Phipps - Our Second Net-Zero Energy Building

Following the opening of the CSL, Phipps sought to construct one of the nation’s first sustainable, modular classrooms as part of its larger efforts to highlight the important connections between people, buildings and the environent, particularly as they relate to children, some of the most vulnerable members of society. Approximately one in three schools in the U.S. currently use modular units, which provide a quick solution for expansion but are commonly cited for the potential health risks they pose due to poor ventilation, compromised indoor air quality, high levels of toxins, mold, excess moisture, inadequate lighting and lack of natural daylight. Using the guidelines of the Living Building Challenge, the Nature Lab reinvents the modular concept, daring to imagine a learning space that is net-positive energy, net-zero water, is built with non-toxic materials, includes ample daylighting and creates a space that fosters inspiration, education and beauty.

Most significant of all is the Nature Lab's role as a publicly accessible model for replication that calls attention to the importance of providing healthy learning environments for children and demonstrates how classrooms of the future can be built to maximize student wellness and potential.

Exhibit Staging Center - Our Third Net-Zero Energy Building

For decades, a dilapidated cinder block public works building sat on Phipps’ lush urban campus. Where others may have torn the building down, we saw an exciting challenge — if we transformed it into one of the greenest buildings in the world, it would help prove that any building can become green and could showcase to the garden’s half a million annual guests that even existing buildings can become beautiful and comfortable places to live, learn, work and play. And since the primary occupants would be maintenance staff, who in addition to children, tend to get some of the worst buildings, the team focused on occupant health, recognizing that environmental equity is as important as solar panels and building efficiency.

In 2019, Phipps opened an adaptive reuse of the original building as the Exhibit Staging Center (ESC) with a dynamic, modernized design and the ambitious goal of achieving three of the world’s most rigorous building standards: Living Building Challenge (achieved June 2023), LEED® Platinum (achieved April 2022) and WELL Platinum (achieved June 2021). The former 1960s windowless public works building now showcases the latest green building technology, transforming a degraded space on a former brownfield into a place dedicated to the well-being of its occupants and visitors, the site’s ecology and the habitat of native species.

The restoration did not simply minimize negative environmental construction impacts, but was regenerative, actually improving the health of the ecosystems in which it is nested while providing a healthy space for employees and guests. Building occupants and visitors benefit from ESC’s features: The team avoided Living Building Red List materials, which contain chemicals designated as harmful. The building houses an exhibit fabrication workshop, grounds maintenance, storage rooms and office space, and a yoga studio, meditation room and fitness center available to all staff.

The ESC proves that the greenest buildings can be ones that already exist. With the right priorities, even the least healthy spaces can become ones that are good for people and the planet.     

Beyond complex mechanical systems and singular energy performance, Phipps’ green buildings had to resonate with people. In order for people to want green buildings, they have to be better than what we experience now. They must be beautiful, designed with the comfort and enjoyment of the occupants in mind. In fact, one petal of the Living Building Challenge focuses on Beauty, stating: “The Living Building Challenge envisions designs that elevate our spirits, connect us to nature and all other living systems and inspire us to be better than we currently are.” This is essential in realizing a building that is not only one of the greenest on Earth, but one that enriches the lives of its occupants and visitors. The CSL, Nature Lab and ESC will be more economical in the long run than a conventional building, refuting the “going green is expensive” excuse. It is also important to bear in mind that the cost of business as usual — building in a way that does not take into account the health of people and the ecosystem — is simply too high. We can longer afford to be so nearsighted in our approach and these three buildings — reflecting new construction, modular and adaptive reuse — demonstrate what is possible.

By showing guests what “good” looks like, then removing barriers to help them start on a more sustainable path in their own lives, Phipps is demonstrating the beauty of living in harmony with the natural world.

Homegrown

A public garden can serve many functions — from education and entertainment to tranquility, gardens offer a variety of benefits to match the needs of those who visit them. But sometimes a garden needs to push beyond conventional scope, going directly to affected communities to make changes from the ground up. Studies conducted by the USDA were among the first to identify “food deserts” — urban neighborhoods without ready access to fresh, healthy and affordable foods. Over seven percent of Americans live in food deserts, placing them at increased risk for obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other ailments. To address this challenge locally, Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens launched the Homegrown edible garden program.

Homegrown installs free raised bed vegetable gardens at households, provides mentorship and resources, and creates a lasting impact on our local communities. The raised bed model helps addresses long-standing issues of soil lead contamination rampant in Pittsburgh’s urban core. Since its inception in 2013, Homegrown has installed vegetable gardens for over 350 families and provided training and knowledge to hundreds of additional community members. The success of the program has been evident for nearly a decade, ensuring the continuation and expansion into other underserved audiences, helping facilitate significant positive health outcomes for families and partner communities. 

Biophilia Symposia

Human health is predicated on the health of the ecosystems in which we are nested. The innate draw that we feel toward living things and systems is known as “biophilia,” literally meaning the “love of life.” The implications of biophilia extend across a vast array of disciplines including design and engineering, nutrition, psychology, public health, education, biology and the humanities. Phipps hosts annual symposia exploring these topics in the context of the interconnectedness and health of humans, animals and the environment. The One Health One Planet Symposium brings an interdisciplinary thought leaders to explore  global and local environmental issues and their effects on human, animal and environmental health as a catalyst for positive change. And the Nature of Place Symposium examines the relationship between health and the built and natural environments in which we live, work, learn and play in the context of urban planning and the importance of access to public green spaces.

Green Power Drive

Nearly nine out of 10 Phipps guests surveyed in 2016 considered climate change a threat “now or in the future.” In 2017, Phipps set a principal goal of demonstrating to guests that each us can have an impact and that addressing this critical issue is something in which each individual can take part. With this in mind, Phipps launched the Make the Switch at Phipps! Green Power Drive, conducted through a special partnership with a green energy provider. Seven days a week, they manage a station in Phipps’ Conservatory where guests can switch their home electricity to 100% green power right on the spot, and those that do are given a free Phipps membership.

Through this innovative effort, which directly impacts the voluntary market for green power, guests are incentivized to switch to renewable energy and to deepen their engagement at Phipps in one easy and powerful action. Since the launch of the Green Power Drive, over 6,500 households have converted to green power, mitigating at least 53,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, or the equivalent of saving 267 rail cars of coal from being burned, or 120 million miles driven by an average passenger car every year. And the numbers are growing every day.