The new 15,830-square-foot Queens Botanical Garden Visitor & Administration Center is the first building in New York City deigned to achieve a platinum LEED rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. The pioneering green building incorporates a jaw-dropping amalgam of green design elements including both geothermal and solar energy technologies, a graywater system that naturally filters rainwater for its central fountain, native plants and flowers sprouting from a living roof, and a hefty smattering of highly efficient HVAC, lighting and passive design components.

“Seventy-five years ago, this was part of the Valley of Ashes described by F. Scott Fitzgerald,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg during the ribbon cutting at the Center’s opening late last year. “Today it has the first platinum-rated building in the metropolitan region and a symbol of renewal.”

Integrating seamlessly into the day to day operation of the Botanical Gardens, these model green design elements, from the water-conserving bioswales to the composting toilets, might have gone undiscovered by garden visitors if not for an interactive web-based display and kiosk from the clean energy monitoring leaders at Fat Spaniel Technologies. The Silicon Valley-based team turned the building’s raw energy and sustainable design data into a green building showcase worthy of Queens Botanical Gardens’ extraordinary efforts.

“The Queens Botanical Garden uses truly innovative green building practices in its new Visitor & Administration Center and Fat Spaniel transforms clean energy data and supporting sustainable design and construction information into a visual format that provides a deeply engaging experience for visitors,” said Chris Beekhuis, president and chief technology officer of Fat Spaniel Technologies. “The Fat Spaniel design team worked with Queens Botanical Garden to develop a series of lush, dynamic and informative Web views that make the educational component of the center as compelling as the sustainable design elements of the gardens themselves.”

Fat Spaniel takes the garden’s online and in-person visitors on a comprehensive virtual tour of the center’s many sustainable construction features and associated benefits to the environment in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and English. Central to Fat Spaniel’s solution for Queens Botanical Garden are the building’s renewable energy systems, which harness clean power from both solar electric and geothermal sources. Visitors to the garden are invited to navigate through an instructive experience that highlights the design and function of the entire clean energy system, from real-time solar energy generation to wind speed, all with a just a few touches of the screen.

Fat Spaniel’s work with Queens Botanical Gardens goes far beyond clean energy. The educational display employs engaging imagery and informative text to teach visitors about the myriad broader sustainability issues relating to the Garden. No longer will such concepts as the urban heat island effect, native plant species, sustainable wood and construction materials, and waste management go unnoticed by the public.

“Fat Spaniel’s stunning interactive visuals make our hard work and innovative approach to green building accessible to our visitors while providing us with the critical information we need to ensure that we keep our renewable energy system operating at peak performance,” said Jennifer Ward Souder, director of capital projects for the Queens Botanical Garden.

To see the Fat Spaniel display in action, please visit: http://view2.fatspaniel.net/FST/Portal/QBG/.