American
firm Morphosis has completed a museum of nature and science in Dallas
where visitors begin their tour by taking an escalator journey to the
uppermost floor.
Surrounded by glazing,
the escalator streaks diagonally across the striated
concrete facade then angles back inside the building. At the top,
each visitor is faced with a view of the city before spiralling their way
back down through five exhibition floors into the atrium where they
first arrived.
The Perot Museum of Nature and Science is sited in Victory Park, downtown
Dallas, and when it opens to the public next weekend it will replace some of
the facilities of the existing Museum of Science and Nature, located
further east in Fair Park.
Morphosis‘ founder Thom Mayne conceived the
building as a large cube emerging from a series of landscaped lower tiers.
These levels, designed in collaboration with landscape architects Talley Associates, are covered in stones and
drought-resistant grasses that are typical of the landscape in Texas.
A 3D
cinema, auditorium, cafe and shop accompany the
eleven exhibition galleries inside the building.
“The Perot Museum of
Nature and Science is a gift to the city of Dallas,” said Mayne. “It is a
fundamentally public building – a building that opens up, belongs to and
activates the city. It is a place of exchange. It contains knowledge, preserves
information and transmits ideas; ultimately, the public is as integral to the
museum as the museum is to the city.”
Here’s a project
description from Morphosis:
Museums, armatures for
collective societal experience and cultural expression, present new ways of
interpreting the world. They contain knowledge, preserve information and
transmit ideas; they stimulate curiosity, raise awareness and create
opportunities for exchange. As instruments of education and social change,
museums have the potential to shape our understanding of ourselves and the
world in which we live.
As our global
environment faces ever more critical challenges, a broader understanding of the
interdependence of natural systems is becoming more essential to our survival
and evolution. Museums dedicated to nature and science play a key role in
expanding our understanding of these complex systems.
The new Perot Museum
of Nature and Science in Victory Park creates a distinct identity for the
Museum, enhances the institution’s prominence in Dallas and enriches the city’s
evolving cultural fabric. Designed to engage a broad audience, invigorate young
minds, and inspire wonder and curiosity in the daily lives of its visitors, the
Museum cultivates a memorable experience that persists in the minds of its
visitors and that ultimately broadens individuals’ and society’s understanding
of nature and science.
The museum strives to
achieve the highest standards of sustainability possible for a building of its
type. High performance design and incorporation of state of the art
technologies yields a new building that minimizes its impact on the
environment.
This world class facility
inspires awareness of science through an immersive and interactive environment
that actively engages visitors. Rejecting the notion of museum architecture as
neutral background for exhibits, the new building itself is an active tool for
science education. By integrating architecture, nature, and technology, the
building demonstrates scientific principles and stimulates curiosity in our
natural surroundings.
The immersive
experience of nature within the city begins with the visitor’s approach to the
museum, which leads through two native Texas ecologies: a forest of large
native canopy trees and a terrace of native desert xeriscaping. The xeriscaped
terrace gently slopes up to connect with the museum’s iconic stone roof. The
overall building mass is conceived as a large cube floating over the site’s
landscaped plinth. An acre of undulating roofscape comprised of rock and native
drought-resistant grasses reflects Dallas’s indigenous geology and demonstrates
a living system that will evolve naturally over time.
The intersection of
these two ecologies defines the main entry plaza, a gathering and event area
for visitors and an outdoor public space for the city of Dallas. From the
plaza, the landscaped roof lifts up to draw visitors through a compressed space
into the more expansive entry lobby. The topography of the lobby’s undulating
ceiling reflects the dynamism of the exterior landscape surface, blurring the
distinction between inside and outside, and connecting the natural with the
manmade.
Moving from the
compressed space of the entry, a visitor’s gaze is drawn upward through the
soaring open volume of the sky-lit atrium, the building’s primary light-filled
circulation space, which houses the building’s stairs, escalators and
elevators. From the ground floor, a series of escalators bring patrons though
the atrium to the uppermost level of the museum. Patrons arrive at a fully glazed
balcony high above the city, with a bird’s eye view of downtown Dallas. From
this sky balcony, visitors proceed downward in a clockwise spiral path through
the galleries. This dynamic spatial procession creates a visceral experience
that engages visitors and establishes an immediate connection to the immersive
architectural and natural environment of the museum.
The path descending
from the top floor through the museum’s galleries weaves in and out of the
building’s main circulation atrium, alternately connecting the visitor with the
internal world of the museum and with the external life of the city beyond. The
visitor becomes part of the architecture, as the eastern facing corner of the
building opens up towards downtown Dallas to reveal the activity within. The
museum, is thus, a fundamentally public building – a building that opens up,
belongs to and activates the city; ultimately, the public is as integral to the
museum as the museum is to the city.
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