The new Niagara Falls Visitor Center, located within Niagara Falls State Park, will offer an immersive experience, both inside the building and out, as it takes visitors on a journey spanning the eras of geological formation and human impacts on the falls and highlighting the flora and fauna of the environs.
Designed by GWWO Architects, the 29,000-sf center will include visitor orientation, a lobby, interactive exhibits, a gift shop, dining, outdoor terraces, and an overlook. The building frames views to the head of the falls and gracefully transitions visitors between the formal entrance gardens in the upper site and the Frederick Law Olmsted- designed landscape of the lower grove.
The expansive glass facade maximizes views and offers continuous connections to the falls throughout the lobby and exhibit areas. The building will be integrated with its site and history via natural materials such as limestone sourced from the Niagara escarpment, wood ceilings, and blackened metal roof and soffit.
The facility’s design will emphasize nature and allow visitors to choose their own path and level of discovery, which will allow for social distancing and crowd control. Outdoor interpretation, dining, and a new accessible path will provide safe spaces for visitors to gather.
The new visitor center will also include sustainable features such as bifacial photovoltaic panels that will be expressed around the perimeter of the roof of the building, with openings in the entrance canopy that will allow them to be viewed from below. Two cisterns will be installed to capture water from the building’s roof to irrigate native plantings on the site.
The Niagara Falls Visitor Center is expected to open in Spring 2023.
Related Stories
| Apr 24, 2014
Unbuilt and Famous: LEGO releases box set of Bjarke Ingels' LEGO museum
LEGO Architecture has created a box set that customers can use to build replicas of the LEGO Museum, which is not yet built in real life. The museum, designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group, will commemorate the history of LEGO.
| Apr 18, 2014
Multi-level design elevates Bulgarian Children's Museum [slideshow]
Embodying the theme “little mountains,” the 35,000-sf museum will be located in a former college laboratory building in the Studenski-grad university precinct.
| Apr 16, 2014
Upgrading windows: repair, refurbish, or retrofit [AIA course]
Building Teams must focus on a number of key decisions in order to arrive at the optimal solution: repair the windows in place, remove and refurbish them, or opt for full replacement.
| Apr 15, 2014
12 award-winning structural steel buildings
Zaha Hadid's Broad Art Museum and One World Trade Center are among the projects honored by the American Institute of Steel Construction for excellence in structural steel design.
| Apr 9, 2014
Colossal aquarium in China sets five Guinness World Records
With its seven salt and fresh water aquariums, totaling 12.87 million gallons, the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom theme park is considered the world’s largest aquarium.
| Apr 9, 2014
Steel decks: 11 tips for their proper use | BD+C
Building Teams have been using steel decks with proven success for 75 years. Building Design+Construction consulted with technical experts from the Steel Deck Institute and the deck manufacturing industry for their advice on how best to use steel decking.
| Apr 2, 2014
8 tips for avoiding thermal bridges in window applications
Aligning thermal breaks and applying air barriers are among the top design and installation tricks recommended by building enclosure experts.
| Mar 26, 2014
Callison launches sustainable design tool with 84 proven strategies
Hybrid ventilation, nighttime cooling, and fuel cell technology are among the dozens of sustainable design techniques profiled by Callison on its new website, Matrix.Callison.com.
Sponsored | | Mar 21, 2014
Kameleon Color paint creates color-changing, iridescent exterior for Exploration Tower at Port Canaveral
Linetec finishes Firestone’s UNA-CLAD panels, achieving a one-of-a-kind, dynamic appearance with the first use of Valspar’s new Kameleon Color
| Mar 20, 2014
Common EIFS failures, and how to prevent them
Poor workmanship, impact damage, building movement, and incompatible or unsound substrate are among the major culprits of EIFS problems.
