Sassafras Cafe

Design Architect: Tao + Lee Associates
Visitor Center Architect: Ayers Saint Gross
Specimen Panels: Arbolope Studio
Panel Fabrication: 3Form
Location: St. Louis, MO

Sassafras Cafe is the main restaurant at the Missouri Botanical Garden, located within the east wing of the visitor center. The daylit dining room opens onto a tree-lined patio with views of the Garden grounds. A communal bench was carved from the trunk of an oak that had grown on the property and was felled during construction. Overhead, oversized white acrylic fixtures resemble both clouds and roses. Walls dividing the dining areas hold pressed specimens drawn from the Garden's collection, a suite of nine panels that fuse dried plant material in glass and resin into graphic arrangements. They are built to read at two scales. From across the room they register as fields of color and shape; up close, the leaf and seed detail emerges.