The new visitor center for New York City's Brooklyn Botanic Garden is conceived as an inhabitable topography defining a threshold between the city and the garden. To provoke curiosity and interest in the world-class collection, the new building will provide a legible point of arrival and orientation, an interface between garden and city, culture and cultivation. The design of the visitor center is seen as a seamless extension of the landscape. Nested into an existing berm, the center is experienced as a three dimensional continuation of the garden path system, framing a series of views into and through the garden.