Phase One of 3-phase Master Plan recognized by nation’s ‘most distinguished building award’
On Dec. 15, the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies jointly awarded Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota the 2025 American Architecture Award® for Phase One of the Gardens’ three-phase Master Plan, Selby Gardens staff announced.
The 31-year-old American Architectural Awards® is the nation’s most prestigious building awards program that honors “new and cutting-edge design in the United States,” a Selby Gardens news release says.
This annual program “also promotes American architecture and design to public audiences in the U.S. and abroad,” the release points out.
This year, the Museum received details about a record number of projects involving new buildings, landscape architecture and urban planning, the release continues. They came “from the most important firms practicing in the U.S. and globally,” the release adds. From a short list of more than 1,500 submissions, the 2025 Jury for Awards selected more than 200 initiatives by the “foremost American design firms in the United States,” upon which to bestow recognition, the release notes.
“We are grateful to receive this distinguished award, which we proudly share with our partners at OLIN, the visionary team at Overland Architects with support by Sweet Sparkman Architecture Interiors, and our dedicated collaborators at Kimley-Horn and Willis Smith [Construction of Lakewood Ranch],” Selby Gardens President & CEO Jennifer Rominiecki said in the release. “Selby Gardens’ Master Plan is redefining what a modern botanical garden can be, and each innovation reflects our commitment to building a more resilient, sustainable, and inspiring Selby Gardens for generations to come,” she noted in the release.
Richard Roark, an OLIN partner, added in the release, “We’re deeply honored to see Marie Selby Botanical Gardens recognized. The project was envisioned as a living connection between community, resilience, and the natural world. Having successfully endured two hurricanes, it now stands as a model for a renewable and regenerative future.”
The January 2024 completion of Phase One added 188,033 square feet of new amenities to Selby Gardens’ Downtown Sarasota campus and the following features, the release points out:
- The “Morganroth Family Living Energy Access Facility (LEAF), which houses parking, a garden-to-plate restaurant — The Green Orchid by Michael’s On East” — a new gift shop, vertical gardens and a nearly 50,000-square-foot solar array “that makes Selby Gardens the first net-positive energy botanical garden complex in the world”;
- “The state-of-the-art Steinwachs Family Plant Research Center, which secures irreplaceable scientific resources in a hurricane-resilient structure and provides a window into once behind-the-scenes world-class research. The facility contains the Elaine Nicpon Marieb Herbarium and Laboratory (housing preserved collections of more than 125,000 dried and pressed plant specimens and molecular scientific work), as well as a research library (with priceless volumes dating to the 1700s), spirit laboratory (with more than 40,000 specimens preserved in fluid — the second largest collection of its kind in the world),” conference rooms, administrative offices and a rooftop garden and solar array;
- “The open-air Jean Goldstein Welcome Center consisting of a ticketing pavilion, welcome gallery, and welcome theater to properly accommodate and orient guests”;
- A “major stormwater management system to divert and clean millions of gallons of water each year before it is returned to Sarasota Bay”;
- A publicly accessible multi-use “recreational trail enabling multimodal transportation to the campus and the bayfront”;
- Off-site roadway improvements, “which also make access easier and safer”;
- A “number of new garden and water features with more open space, including a Lily Pond Garden, Glades Garden, and the restoration of historic Palm Avenue as a pedestrian-only promenade.”