An Architectural Masterpiece in the Badlands

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. Source: Snohetta.

The new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library by Snohetta is a breathtaking example of integrating architecture with landscape. Dezeen.com writes that the "95,000-square-foot building features a green roof that crests over the interior volumes, connecting with the ground and conforming to the hills and prairies of the North Dakota Badlands, with its ravines, gulches and buttes left over by ancient erosion." Check out the article to view all the images. The building design and landscape features are detailed here, although the images are renders rather than "as constructed."

The Library is pursuing LEED Platinum and SITES certification. SITES is landscape architecture's answer to LEED.

The green roof that arches over the building's interior is planted with plugs grown from native seeds collected from the site. The Library describes the detailed process it undertook to source and grow the plant material for the roof and the site's bioswales here.

The Library sits on property immediately outside the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which extends a little over 70,000 acres in three discontiguous section: the north unit, the south unit, and Elkhorn Ranch.

The North Dakota landscape is hauntingly beautiful in summer (and genuinely terrifying in winter), but it is often overlooked when we plan out our sumer vacations. The Theodore Rooselvelt Library adds yet another reason to put North Dakota's Badlands on the vacation bucket-list