California Academy of Sciences, part 2: color and quakes

If forced to choose, my favorite part of the California Academy of Sciences would be the Rainforest Dome — check out Part 1 of my visit — but there were many other fascinating exhibitions to enjoy, including Color of Life: Discover Nature's Secret Language, designed by the museum’s Exhibits Studio and opened last year.

The exhibition uses bright, bold colors, beautiful photographs, and accessible writing to “reveal the significant roles color plays across a spectrum of species.”

Within the 8,000 square foot exhibition are immersive interactive experiences, including a musical color visualizer, designed by Tellart. Video screens respond to strings, plucked by visitors, with a show of images and videos related to that string’s color.

Another popular interactive experience is the “Courtship Dance Stage.”

Throughout the exhibition are dioramas and small interactives that allow you to see organisms under different types of lighting, or through the eyes of other animals (just for example).

Also 8,000 square feet in size, the older (circa-2012) exhibition, Earthquake: Life of a Dynamic Planet, explores the seismic science of Earth’s geologic transformations through installations such as a 25-foot-wide, walk-through model of Earth, and the immersive “Shake House.”

Other sections of the Earthquake exhibit focus on the diverse life forms that evolved and spread as Pangaea split up, and earthquake preparedness.

There are mini-exhibits throughout the museum, including a show of Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species series of silkscreen prints, from 1983. In 2007 the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list; the other featured animals remain.

Other mini-exhibits focused on variation, in ladybugs and in humans. 

Rounding out my visit, I strolled through the Human Odyssey exhibition, an exploration of the origins of humankind, and the African Hall, home to classic, stuffy, stuffed-animal dioramas (and live penguins).

I highly recommend this museum — it’s beautifully designed, fascinating, and educational. I also recommend you consider picking up a City Pass if you plan to visit more than one museum. They are expensive in San Francisco — said from DC, where the museums are mostly free.

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Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 3 October 2016.

California Academy of Sciences, part 1: rainforests and reefs

I wrapped up June — oh, wow it’s August! — with a trip to Yosemite (happy birthday, National Park Service) and San Francisco, where I spent a day parade-watching and a couple days museum-going.

One museum that filled nearly an entire day was the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. Below is a photo of the museum’s exterior and its brilliant Living Roof, as seen from the de Young Museum.

There are so many exhibits within “the Academy” (and so many photos to show) that I’ve broken this post into two parts. Part 1 here covers the Aquarium on the lower level, designed by Thinc Design, and the Rainforest on Level 1.

After entering the museum I was swept up with the crowds heading to the 4-story, 90-foot-diameter Rainforest Dome. Inside, the rainforest visit begins on a Bornean forest floor, winds upward through a Madagascan mid-story and a Costa Rican canopy, then ends on the lower level in an Amazonian flooded forest.

As a designer, I liked the dome’s juxtaposition of glass and steel and abstracted jungle motifs against living flora and fauna, and the changing vistas as I moved further up the dome. As a nature enthusiast, I enjoyed its subject matter; as a weary museum visitor, I appreciated its delivery: not too much, not too little; brief, interesting, and useful.

The bright, straightforward graphics make use of vivid photographs, and the occasional illustration of an animal signals your arrival in a new area of the jungle. Bamboo- or vine-like vertical posts give a stylized–naturalistic element to exhibit tanks. The light touch with exhibit elements gives the rainforest dome a feeling of exploration and discovery (just ignore the school groups).

At the top of the dome, look out over the three stories you’ve just visited, and down, through a 100,000 gallon tank, to the flooded forest floor. Take an elevator down, then enter the tunnel you were just looking through from afar. Everyone says “oooh.”

The aquarium level felt jam-packed and massive; it’s where I spent most of my time during a 3 hour + visit. There were many exhibitions to see: Amazon Flooded Forest, Water Planet, California Coast, Coral Reefs of the World, Twilight Zone, and more.

Down here, animal identification is found on digital touchscreens. They were intuitive and fun to use, and had just the right amount of information: an animal’s common name, its scientific name, diet, and a one-sentence fact about it.

Below are some photos of the Water Planet exhibition, which groups underwater animals by adaptations. Projected blue and green lighting casts an underwater glow on the sculptural wave walls (similar material here). In the center of the room are curvilinear tanks. (I was reminded of the Van Cleef & Arpels traveling exhibition, circa 2012. It must be the bubbles.)

The highlight of the Coral Reefs of the World exhibition is the 25-foot deep Philippine Coral Reef tank (above). The exhibit graphics in this area are large image-based wallpapers.

The exhibition Twilight Zone: Deep Reefs Revealed had just opened on June 10. It’s memorable for its tanks filled with the most incredible jellies and vivid deep sea fishes.

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 23 August 2016.

The News 04.11.12

A compilation of design-related web finds.

Everyone’s been raving about Doug Aitken: SONG 1 at the Hirshhorn — because it’s awesome. I’ve visited twice and would (will) visit at least once more before it closes on May 13. You have to experience it in person.

My former firm, Christopher Chadbourne & Associates, announced their closure. This past summer I accepted a position with Gallagher & Associates, and moved to Washington, DC | In memory of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking on April 15, dozens of exhibits about the ship have opened, including the the world’s largest, in Belfast; also: Fire & Ice: Hindenburg and Titanic at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum; Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, everywhere; Titanic at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York, NY | The Union Pacific Railroad Museum’s Building America traveling exhibit is located in a traveling train car, naturally. The entire museum opens in Iowa in a month | Part 1 in a series of articles describing exhibit design, from Mark Walhimer at museumplanner.org | Blueprint, a guidebook to build your own history museum in the 21st century, from The Museum of the Future | Pinned Inspiration: ice ceiling; purple-sided lightboxes; German Expressionism at the MoMA; education center at the San Diego Children's Museum.

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Post updated in January 2021 with text edits. Broken links have been replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 11 April 2012.

The News 05.01.11

A compilation of design-related web finds.

Creating Material Lab at MoMA | Design to Preserve by the Cooper-Hewitt | Coming soon to the Mall? National Women’s History Museum Makes Another Push Toward Existence and National Latino Museum Plan Faces Fight (hint: probably not) | “Jurassic Park meets Buckminster Fuller” — a zoo that imagines a reunited Pangea | MoMath, the National Museum of Mathematics in New York, is raising funds | Vertical Urban Factory at the Skyscraper Museum in New York (slide show here) | Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War at the Canadian Centre for Architecture | The World’s Largest Dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History looks amazing (slide show here; I love photo 3!) | La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Mexican American cultural center in LA, “screens in a public alley space that both bring the stories out of the museum and draw passersby into the experience.” More in this article from GOOD | The National Museum of American Jewish History opens in Philadelphia | Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center opens in Skokie (review and slide show) | The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles (review and slide show) | The MBTA steps up its “See Something Say Something” campaign, and in Boston’s North Station:

AND an upcoming opening!

Conner Prairie Interactive History Park is opening a new exhibit, 1863 Civil War Journey: Raid on Indiana, in June. Part theater, part living history museum; the interactive experience is centered around a recreation of a Civil War-era town complete with homes, a general store, and a schoolhouse. As part of the Christopher Chadbourne & Associates team, I designed the graphics located in the schoolhouse, where the lessons of the park are pulled together.

I designed a tabletop graphic for a touch table that houses three monitors. It’s meant to appear as though it were strewn with historic maps and military tactical manuals. I also designed a flipbook that holds background information about the park’s characters, in the style of a scrapbook; and a large “chalkboard” wall graphic inspired by Civil War broadsides and illustrated with a map and hand lettering. These were fun graphics to design, geared toward families and school groups.

Post updated in January 2021. Broken links have been replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 1 May 2011.

The News 06.23.10

A compilation of design-related web finds.

Sometimes it seems like there really is a museum for and about everything. Name a topic, and I bet you can find an obscure museum dedicated to it. Tractors? Barbed wire? Plastics? Architectural models? Chinese shadow puppets? Battlestar Galactica? | Natural history exhibits opening this summer, in no way exhaustive: Whales at the Museum of Science, Boston (they offer a museum admission/whale watch ticket combo); The Deep at the Natural History Museum, London; Race to the End of the Earth, about Arctic explorers, at the American Museum of Natural History; the AMNH’s Climate Change exhibit moves to the Field Museum in Chicago; Age of Mammals, a “a postmodern diorama” in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles’s newly restored 1912 building | This photo of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s collection of thousands of birds is just great | A Micro Museum for the Design of and with Typography; Typopassage Vienna is inside the Museumsquartier in Vienna and open 24 hours a day, every week of the year. (Curious; who’d be there at 4am?) | Shape Lab, an interactive educational space for families. Who wouldn’t want to play there? | The British Museum and Wikipedia’s unusual collaboration.

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Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed or replaced. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 23 June 2010.

The News 03.02.10

A compilation of design-related web finds.

Design Museum Boston (update: now simply, Design Museum) is all set to pop-up in the window of an abandoned storefront near you | A video tour of the “Biology Range” at the New York State Museum, where they keep their preserved biological specimens | The Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart has the World’s Largest Artificial Tornado inside; the ventilation system draws in smoke from the building and sends it up and out an exhaust vent | Another German museum, another car museum: exploded views from the Porsche Museum (also in Stuttgart) and the Harley Davidson Museum (in Milwaukee) | If cars are not your thing but exploded views are, you might instead enjoy one of an Etch A Sketch | Multiple Shadow House by Olafur Eliasson at the Tonya Bonakdar Gallery in NY: “The individual lights are all different colors, but they create white light when they all blend on a single wall. As visitors walk in front of the light sources, that hides certain colors — thus freeing the rest to reveal themselves as colored shadows.” | The One Day Poem Pavilion “demonstrates the poetic, transitory, site-sensitive and time-based nature of light and shadow.”

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Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken link has been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 2 March 2010.

The News 01.19.10

A compilation of design-related web finds.

L.A.’s Natural History Museum to receive $1-million grant for new permanent exhibition | Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront — I’ve been following with interest the progress of the program and upcoming exhibit on the MoMA/P.S.1 blog | Towards a New Mainstream? On 27 January 2–3pm EST, a lecture by Gregory Rodriguez exploring demographic change in the Americas, cultural transformation, and the future of museums | Color Identifying System for the Color Blind | An Increasing Craving for Experiences; there has been a lot written lately about experience-over-stuff — hello, museums! | Light Touch interactive projector turns any flat surface into a touchscreen | An Architect’s Philosophy of Photography | Steffen Dam: Specimen Panels These are beautiful; very “natural history museum” | Barton’s Bonbonniere, From Architectural Forum c. 1952 — I love it! What a fun space.

AND NOW, something from the portfolio:

Work shown was completed while I was a designer at Christopher Chadbourne & Associates.

This time last year (January 17, 2009), the Tampa Bay History Center — designed by Christopher Chadbourne & Associates — held its grand opening in downtown Tampa, Florida. I worked closely with the project’s senior graphic designer Jeff Stammen on design development.

(Photo above and first three photos below, courtesy Tampa Bay History Center.)

I took a leading design role for the timeline (Your Tampa Bay) and the War Stories gallery. Below is my sketch of the War Stories gallery, and below that, a photo I took during installation — hence the empty case.

All the graphics in this museum were designed with both English and Spanish text. I love the challenge of designing multilingual graphics.

I was also responsible for Construction Administration, and supervised the exhibit installation. I love shop visits, site visits, inspecting fabrication samples … all of that. What happened with the Tampa installation was a little … let’s just say, complicated. The local fabricator, Creative Arts, was fantastic and saved the installation day in a lot of ways. I ended up effectively living in a hotel room for a couple weeks during the tail end of installation — much longer than my trip to Tampa was supposed to be. It was quite the learning experience. In hindsight, I can say I had fun.

(Photo above and photo below, courtesy Tampa Bay History Center.)

Post updated in January 2021. Broken links have been fixed or replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 19 January 2010.