How does a landscape architect cultivate nature
without corrupting it? The question goes back at
least to the 18th century, when the novelist Samuel
Richardson wrote that the ideal was for the artist
“not to level hills, or to force and distort nature;
but to help it, as he finds it, without letting art be
seen in his works, where he can possibly avoid it.”
The undulating green roof that sits atop the new
California Academy of Sciences building in San
Francisco’s Golden Gate Park tries to strike a similar balance. Like the museum it shelters, it is
designed to respect the natural world even as it
appropriates it, serving at once as a wildlife habitat and a first-rate work of art.
When the roof (along with the building) opens
to the public this month, it will be, at 2. 5 acres,
the largest such “living” structure in California.
Conceived in 1999 by the architect Renzo Piano
(who also designed the building), it was completed
over six years by a team of specialists that included the environmental consultants Rana Creek;
Frank Almeda, a botanist at the Academy; and the
landscape-architecture firm SWA Group. The roof
has seven signature hills, created to evoke San
Museumgoers will be able to view
the living roof in action from an
observation deck, shown above
in an early rendering.
