Leaf Structure

Size: 200 SF
Owner: Dallas Arboretum and City of Dallas Department of Parks and Recreation

Designed to serve as a gateway and entry pavilion to Dallas Arboretum Children’s Garden, Leaf Structure is situated at the top of a pedestrian ramp that emerges from an underground that connects a public parking structure on the other side of a highway to the Garden. The form of the steel pavilion is derived from the tiny cellular structure of a leaf.

The pavilion’s internal structural and construction logic parallels leaf pattern of growth. Structural engineering of the folded steel plates that make up the canopy utilized a collaborative, morphological design procedure using finite element analysis (FEA). This began an iterative, back-and-forth process mimicked the organic means by which natural structures typically develop.