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Landscapes of the Center

The Context of the Presidential Center

The George W. Bush Presidential Center will be set within a landscape that contributes positively to the larger setting of the SMU campus while also communicating the Center’s own unique mission. Starting with an arrival sequence through a grove of high-branched shade trees, reminiscent of the most cherished spaces on the SMU campus, toward an honorific entry plaza, the landscape creates an introduction for the building that is appropriate to its university context while also setting the stage for entry into the exhibits. Landscape spaces directly adjacent to the building, including the Freedom Plaza, a central café courtyard, the Texas Rose Garden, and the South Terrace, provide outdoor programming spaces for the Presidential Center while the larger grounds feature a network of paths that traverse native Texas landscape typologies such as Blackland Prairie, Post Oak Savannah and Cross Timbers Forest.

The Texas Rose Garden, possessing the same proportions, solar orientation, and formal organization as the White House Rose Garden, references one of the landscapes most deeply associated with the office of the Presidency. Set within a larger landscape that recreates the ecological zones of the Texas Blackland Prairie, the landscape speaks specifically to this particular president’s roots in the state of Texas. In addition to building on the Presidential Center’s symbolic content, and celebrating the beauty of the native Texas plant palette, all elements within the landscape scheme support the larger project’s ambitious sustainability objectives by increasing biodiversity, restoring native habitat, limiting the need for extensive irrigation and maintenance, and retaining stormwater runoff in wet areas of the site and in underground cisterns, diverting water to the city system only under extreme conditions. The diverse landscape functions that are supported by this design will allow the Presidential Center to become an integrated part of its social and environmental context.

Arrival

 

The landscape design modifies SMU Boulevard's strict linearity into a gently sinuous parkway in the area north of the Presidential Center, providing a dignified arrival sequence for visitors through a grove of canopy trees and rolling lawn with views directed into the landscape. Visitors park directly north of SMU Boulevard in a parking area tucked behind landforms. This parking area connects by a pathway directly to Freedom Plaza, the main visitor’s entrance on the north side of the building.

 

Lawn and Wooded Lawn

Generous lawn areas provide a landscape transition between the campus of SMU and the Presidential Center. Framing the edges of the 32 acre site, the partially shaded lawns will be open and inviting public landscapes to be enjoyed by students, visitors, neighbors and staff for sitting, picnicking or playing. The lawn will consist of a multispecies selection of native grasses which provides a similar appearance and function as the more typical non-native monocultures, but will require less watering, eliminate the need for weed killer, and necessitate less frequent mowing. Canopy trees indigenous to the region’s Cross Timber Forest, such as Cedar Elm, Pecan and Blackjack Oak will frame the entry pathway, providing landscape depth, and creating shaded comfort. The decision to source plant materials regionally will support the project’s sustainability objectives by creating biodiversity and restoring native habitat.

Gardens and Courtyards

The visitor's experience of the Presidential Center's exhibits will be supported by a number of outdoor spaces. The courtyard in the center of the building is a place for gathering outside the entry into the Museum exhibit. Providing for the practical needs of school groups as well as individuals, it will include café services and generous seating opportunities. A life-sized bronze statue of President Bush is tentatively planned for this space.

The Texas Rose Garden is integrated into the experience of the museum, offering a moment of rest and reflection at the halfway point within the exhibit space. Building on proportions, architectural context, and solar orientation that are inspired by the White House Rose Garden, the Texas Rose Garden features a range of plantings that are adaptable to the humid subtropical climate of Dallas. Whereas many previous presidential museums have featured precise replicas of the Oval Office, this homage to White House Rose Garden is unique. An interpretation of the original rather than a copy, the Texas Rose Garden will include long marble seatwalls that provide views out to the Presidential Center's Blackland Prairie setting as well as the Dallas Skyline beyond. The eastern axis of the garden culminates in a large water garden with water lilies, irises, and sedges. Conceived of as part of the larger museum space, the Texas Rose Garden includes an exhibit of quotes in niches on the wall parallel to the loggia. Formal evergreen hedges of native Yaupon Holly frame massings of perennials, grasses, and shrubs, such as Prairie Phlox, Mealy Blue Sage, American Beautyberry and Mexican Plum, Scarlet Buckeye and Southern Magnolia provide scale and shade for the garden.

All of the courtyard plantings, as well as the plants for the Presidential Suite green roofs, will be selected for their suitability to the particular microclimates that they inhabit. Emphasis is placed on general hardiness and low maintenance needs alongside experiential benefits by way of notable seasonal characteristics such as habit, bark, leaf shape autumnal color, fruit, fragrance, and flower.

Tallgrass Prairie

 

Situated on gently sloping upland areas south of the Presidential Center, large open swaths of tallgrasses reintroduce a plant community that was ubiquitous in the Blackland Prairie's pre-settlement landscape. Wooded edges skirt expansive areas of prairie, mimicking the relationship between the open upland prairies and bottomland forests discovered by early Texas settlers. Following an initial period of installation and establishment, this plant community will require no irrigation. Maintenance will be limited to an annual disturbance regime consisting of mowing, grazing, or controlled burning to catalyze the new growth that will sustain the prairie. Seasonal arrivals of wildflowers such as Goldenrod, Coneflowers, Eryngo and Maximillan Sunflower will dapple the fields of tallgrass with color.

 

Savanna and Woodland

A mosaic of short grass prairie clearings and dense tree clusters delineate the hillsides south of the Presidential Center. Experienced from a network of granular and mown pathways, strategically placed groups of trees or mottes frame views to and from the building or screen undesirable views such as the bus parking area and the North Central Expressway sound barrier. The complexity of species and spatial composition the Post-Oak Savannah vegetation provides a range of native habitat for butterflies, birds and other wildlife species that flourish in the zone of ecological overlap between field and forest. Canopy trees such as Post Oak and Blackjack Oak gracefully shade understory and shrub plantings such as Texas Redbud, Red Osier Dogwood, Beautyberry and Flameleaf Sumac.

Wildflower Prairie

Nestled within a series of rolling hills, the sheltered meadow consists of a diverse palette of native wildflower species appropriate to the region and to the microclimates that will prevail at this location of the site. The Wildflower Meadow's topography provides privileged views from above and centralized positions, creating opportunities to appreciate the strong seasonal contributions that this plant community makes to the overall design of the landscape. The Wildflower Meadow will create color and beauty within the Presidential Center landscape over many seasons of the year without the need for extensive maintenance or water. In early spring the meadow will be blanketed with Bluebonnets, the quintessential Texas wildflower.

Floodplain Forest

A fingerlike network of bioswales convey surface runoff at the Visitor Parking areas and the landscape south of the Institute building through a selection of plantings indigenous to the region’s creek bottoms. This specialized plant community filters contaminants and improves water quality to levels that allow usage for irrigation on the entire landscape while at the southern part of the site, creating cool, shaded corridors for meandering paths connecting to the Wildflower Meadow.

Wet Prairie

With the capacity to capture and retain large amounts of runoff generated from storm events, the Wet Prairie limits the need to discharge excess stormwater to the City's overburdened drainage systems. This ever changing landscape feature provides a critical role in the site's hydrological system as well as making the natural phenomena of seasonal precipitation patterns more visible to visitors. The plant community associated with wet prairies consists or grass species similar to the short grass prairie or savanna with Little Bluestem and Bushy Bluestem species. A range of sedges such as Cherokee Sedge and Inland Sea Oats also inhabit these conditions as they are adapted to both full saturated and xeric soil conditions. Tree species may include the graceful habit of Black Willow and the distinguished form and color of Sycamore.

Hydrology

Site hydrology supports the overall ecological self-sufficiency of the Presidential Center landscape through its integration with the design of architectural systems and planting typologies. This multi-faceted stormwater strategy enables the Center to absorb rainwater runoff on site, cleanse contaminants from stormwater, harvest stormwater for irrigation reuse, and sustainably support native plant communities that thrive in wet conditions. Roofwater and cooling tower blowdown water will be captured and piped directly to the cisterns without the need for filtration. Surface runoff from pavement areas will be conveyed and treated through a series of bioswales. Within the southern landscape, bioswales deposit stormwater into a wet prairie. Following the rain event, this volume of water slowly infiltrates into a below grade cistern and is reused for irrigation.