A new house of botany

For centuries, museums and universities have been collecting plants, fungi, lichens and other botanical organisms in scientific collections, the so-called herbaria, which represent a unique and constantly growing archive of nature.
 

Plants are usually pressed and dried for this purpose, which preserves them permanently. With around 5.5 million objects from all over the world, the herbarium of the Natural History Museum Vienna is one of the 10 largest and most important botanical collections in the world. Founded in 1807 as an imperial collection, the collection looks back on a long and eventful history that is closely interwoven with the University of Vienna.
 

While the collections were originally used to document finds or as comparative material for scientific research, technological progress has opened up numerous further possibilities for using the collections to answer current questions. New species are discovered and taxonomically described on the basis of the material, chemical analyses lead to the development of new medicines, DNA sequencing allows deep insights into relationships, and distribution data makes it possible to investigate the impact of global warming and the biodiversity crisis.
 

In order to bring this social responsibility to perfection, the Natural History Museum Vienna and the University of Vienna share a common vision: to unite the collections into one of the largest in the world – a new House of Botany in the city center of Vienna, as a globally important place of research and knowledge transfer.
 

Students of the Vienna University of Technology under the direction of Dr. Gerhard Schnabl and Prof. Pier Paolo Tamburelli have taken on this design challenge and analyzed the former Vienna Glacis, the area in front of the former city wall along today's Ringstrasse and Zweierlinie, and developed open space design concepts and architectural designs for the new House of Botany.
 

The designs – which are also illustrated using three-dimensional architectural models – will be on display in a special exhibition in Hall 21 at the Natural History Museum from May 8 to 30, 2024.