Photos by Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Carpentaria palms are the exhibit's tallest trees. They are more than 40 feet tall and can grow to 60 feet, as high as the conservatory's roof.

By Patricia Lowry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The newest addition to Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens flares out from the historic glasshouse like a giant, crystalline butterfly wing. But from the front of the conservatory, you don't even know it's there.

		'Tropical Forest: Thailand' Featuring: Exotic plants, waterfalls, grottos and a tree-top canopy walk. Where: Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Oakland Cost: Free with Phipps admission ($4.50 to $7.50) Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day; until 9 p.m. Fridays. From Dec. 11 to 31, open until 9 p.m. every day. Information: 412-622-6914 or www.phipps. conservatory.org. RELATED VIDEO Walking through an indoor tropical forest A green room for a tropical forest

The new $6.5 million Tropical Forest wing is smartly designed by Pittsburgh-based IKM Inc. to be the most environmentally friendly conservatory in the world, with innovative strategies and technologies that substantially raise the bar for glasshouse performance.

Pittsburgh long has been blessed with one of the finest historic conservatories; now it also has one of the most forward-thinking, taking the lead in showing that a notoriously energy-inefficient building type doesn't have to be that way. And that a contemporary conservatory design can be perfectly compatible with a Victorian glasshouse, especially when the topography cooperates.

At 12,000 square feet, what is now Phipps' largest room discreetly attaches to the back of the landmark 1893 building and overlooks Panther Hollow, which suggested a vertical, hillside exhibit. Beginning today and for the next two years, the soaring, 60-foot-tall room displays and interprets the landscape and plants of Thailand, the lush Southeast Asia land of more than 62 million people.

Why Thai? Its rich plant culture permeates every region, from the mountainous north to the islands and coastal areas of the peninsular south.

"Horticulture is important to the livelihood of the country," said Karen Daubmann, Phipps' director of horticulture.

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	Hibiscus flowers float in pots of water. Click photo for larger image.

Medicinal plants are used in healing; mahogany and teak trees grow there and the food is fresh and plant-based.

"And they have extraordinary home gardens full of colorful and fragrant plants. People have huge vines crawling off their patios and orchids hanging off their clotheslines," she said. "No matter where you turn, there's unbelievable plant life."

Thailand also filled the conservatory's desire to inaugurate the Tropical Forest room with a colorful, exotic locale most Pittsburghers haven't visited. So late last November, Ms. Daubmann and Phipps' education specialist Heather Mikulas left for three weeks in Thailand. The two women took thousands of photographs, which staffers consulted to represent the Thai experience.

The top half of the new room is wild and forested, like the country's mountains; on the descent visitors pass a rock-like waterfall, a botanist's field station and a healer's hut before arriving at the Palm Circle on the glasshouse floor, meant to represent a village and its formal gardens. All are places where Phipps staffers will conduct educational programs.

The Thailand exhibit adds about 500 species new to Phipps' collection, so there are lots of unfamiliar plants to learn about. Overlooking them all is a walkway that projects into the forest canopy and provides dynamic, panoramic views over Panther Hollow and Oakland.

At the research field station, visitors will be able to talk with Phipps' Botany in Action graduate students and interact with their collecting equipment. Most are studying medicinal plants in countries around the world.

The healer's hut, surrounded by medicinal plants, will display the drying trays and other tools of the healer's trade. Programs there will focus on the role of tropical forest plants in medical research.

Every two years, such exhibits and some plants will change to reflect a different tropical forest region and culture. In 2009, the room goes Amazon.

In the ground-level Palm Circle, as many as 40 visitors can gather for presentations and programs and learn from staffers about the building's use of ancient and innovative technologies. Traditional conservatories are expensive to heat in winter and cool in summer. This one, designed by an IKM team led by Joel Bernard and built by Turner Construction, is a model of new approaches that will reduce energy costs at least by half.

"Our goal for the Tropical Forest is to get Energy Star rating," said Phipps director Richard Piacentini, "because then it would be the standard by which conservatories would be judged." Energy Star is a joint program of the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy.

Thermal massing allows the room to capture and retain the sun's heat in the 12-inch-thick concrete north walls. The curving, south-facing wall, overlooking the hollow, uses single-pane glass to absorb maximum sunlight in winter. The roof, which slopes back to the north, employs double-pane glass to prevent heat loss. Computer-controlled fabric screens on the roof provide shade in the summer and act as thermal blankets in winter.

Earth tubes -- 1,800 feet of them -- are buried beneath the Tropical Forest and take in air that maintains a constant 55-degree temperature, cooling the building without the use of grid-powered air conditioning. Large vents in the roof will allow rising hot air to escape, aided by winds coming up from the hollow.

The Tropical Forest will be the first conservatory to use a fuel cell; this one, about the size of a commercial refrigerator, efficiently and cleanly produces electricity from natural gas. It was manufactured by Pittsburgh-based Siemens Power Generation.

There is more to come, including a grassy "sun terrace" and landscaped gardens leading to Panther Hollow, its lake and Schenley Park. Also in the planning stage is an education and administration building on a plateau beneath the new wing.

The Tropical Forest building is part of a $36.6 million reinvestment that includes last year's new entrance pavilion and production greenhouses and the restoration of Botany Hall. With it, Phipps enters its third century brilliantly positioned for the future.