Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center Wins Best of Show in the 2025 SEGD Global Design Awards

The Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden has been named the winner of an SEGD Honor Award for Placemaking and the Best of Show Award in the 2025 SEGD Global Design Awards. The society’s highest accolade, the Best of Show award “shines a spotlight brighter than any other – recognizing one project that exemplifies the very best in experiential design, innovation, and impact.”

Since 1987, the SEGD Global Design Awards have set the benchmark for experiential design by celebrating the most innovative projects shaping how people engage the built environment. This year, the organization received 284 entries from 151 firms, including 68 submissions from 18 countries outside the U.S. and 28 student projects. The Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center is one of only 30 projects to be awarded, and the only Best of Show winner.

The Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center, which opened in 2023 in St. Louis, Missouri, was designed to blur boundaries between indoors and outdoors while creating an immersive experience that incorporates elements of the natural world. The interpretive, educational, and wayfinding features of the building play a fundamental role in enhancing the visitor experience.

Design elements featured in the visitor center include a custom-designed scrim that filters dappled light into the lobby to evoke the feeling of entering a clearing in the woods. The scrim’s perforation pattern was studied and tested extensively, seeking a balance of beauty and functionality – transforming the quality of light while also shading key areas such as the ticketing desk.

Additional biophilic elements include custom terrazzo flooring that reflects the local landscape, with inlays of river rock and more than 200 hand-laid brass leaves; wayfinding with warm brass lettering and zinc panels; and furniture forms inspired by rocks and pebbles.

“For nearly four decades, the Global Design Awards have defined design excellence in how we connect people to place through storytelling, meaning, and impact,” said SEGD CEO Cybelle Jones. “Winning projects highlight the breadth of our community – from deeply researched approaches that prove design’s impact beyond beauty, to work that advances equity, sustainability, and a more connected world.”

“The Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center was designed to inspire visitors to learn about and take wonder in the natural environment. We are so honored that the collaboration and thought that the entire design team put into this work has been recognized in this way,” said Margaret Zivkovich, associate principal for Ayers Saint Gross.

SEGD jurors praised the visitor center, including its clear design intent and beautiful execution, with the following comments:

• “The use of custom-designed scrim in the pattern of the Ginko canopy elegantly complements the architecture, allowing dappled light to pour in and creating an airy feeling even on overcast days. The wooden benches create necessary restful moments along the river rock surrounded by the leaf terrazzo, allowing visitor movement to flow around the center as river streams splitting around rocks do.”
• “Both epic and restrained at the same time, the care, love, and warmth of this project came through to the whole jury. It takes passion and commitment to make a simple set of ideas come to fruition on a stage this large.”
• “The architecture and nature elements are beautifully integrated, the dynamic environmental graphics activated by the diurnal play of shadows, offer a truly innovative and visually compelling experience.”
• “The tranquility of this entire site reads incredibly well as an ephemeral, light and airy entry plaza. The subtlety of the color palette and the attention of small detail makes this project stand out as a fresh and clear winner.”

Learn more about this award: The SEGD Global Design Awards – SEGD – Designers of Experiences.

Learn more about our work in Experiential Graphic Design.