The Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo (JMZ) has completed, CAW Architects recently announced. Located within the Palo Alto Arts and Recreation District, the project replaces the original JMZ facility. The project area spans three acres and includes a 15,200-sf building and the 18,800-sf zoo (including back-of-house spaces).
CAW Architects worked with Studio Hansen Roberts to design a new children’s museum and zoo that rethinks how to capture a child’s wonder and curiosity for the natural world and create interactive learning experiences throughout. Organized around an exhibit hall, education center, and outdoor zoo, the new design creates a strong visible presence through a large entrance porch and a variety of free outdoor exhibit spaces. The exhibit spaces extend into the adjacent surroundings and include the stump maze, the rainbow tunnel, and porch swings.
The building forms fit a residential and agrarian vernacular with simple clean forms and shed roofs, which echo the surrounding neighborhood. The building shapes fit in and around existing mature oaks and feature trees, where the buildings create theme-based outdoor courtyard spaces, such as the Jurassic courtyard, for specific educational opportunities.
The exhibit hall contains a variety of interactive and kinesthetic exhibits in which children can interact. Several large windows and skylights directly link the zoo with the exhibit hall, with some exhibits extending from the zoo directly into the museum.
The entire zoo is designed as a large aviary, allowing a wide range of birds to directly interact with the children. The exhibits within the zoo are layered vertically to give kids an opportunity to view the natural environment from different vantage points. The design allows children to experience the natural environment of spaces below such as tree roots and water ponds, while also creating spaces above, for children to explore up in the central tree to then look down on the various zoo experiences. A tree house runs through the center of the zoo and connects all the spaces with rope bridges, ladders, net tubes, and platforms to create a play-based experience for children.
CAW Architects' work on the project included the site masterplan, including the museum, zoo, and education center to integrate it into the overall city complex; architectural design and interior design of the museum, education wing, and administrative support spaces; and site design including exhibit spaces around the museum exterior, zoo exhibit spaces, and zoo support spaces.
In addition to CAW Architects and Studio Hansen Roberts, the project team also included:
- Landscape Design: Vallier Design
- General Contractor: Vance Brown Builders
- Structural Engineer: Hohbach Lewin
- Specialized Structural Engineer: Coffman Engineers INC.
- Giotechnical Engineer: Silicon Valley Soil Engineering
- Civil Engineer: C2G
- Mechanical/Plumbing: ACCO Engineered Systems
- Electrical Engineer: H.A. Bowen Electric
- Project Arborist: HortScience, Inc.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Jacobs, HDR top BD+C's ranking of the nation's 100 largest institutional building design firms
A ranking of the Top 100 Institutional Design Firms based on Building Design+Construction's 2009 Giants 300 survey. For more Giants 300 rankings, visit http://www.BDCnetwork.com/Giants
Museums | Aug 11, 2010
Design guidelines for museums, archives, and art storage facilities
This column diagnoses the three most common moisture challenges with museums, archives, and art storage facilities and provides design guidance on how to avoid them.
| Aug 11, 2010
Museum celebrates African-American heritage
The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture recently completed construction on the Wells Fargo Cultural Campus in Charlotte, N.C. Designed by the Freelon Group, Durham, N.C., with Batson-Cook's Atlanta office as project manager, the $18.8 million project achieved nearly 100% minority participation.
| Aug 11, 2010
Design for Miami Art Museum triples gallery space
Herzog & de Meuron has completed design development for the Miami Art Museum’s new complex, which will anchor the city’s 29-acre Museum Park, overlooking Biscayne Bay. At 120,000 sf with 32,000 sf of gallery space, the three-story museum will be three times larger than the current facility.
| Aug 11, 2010
Thom Mayne unveils ‘floating cube’ design for the Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Calling it a “living educational tool featuring architecture inspired by nature and science,” Pritzker Prize Laureate Thom Mayne unveiled the schematic designs and building model for the Perot Museum of Nature & Science at Victory Park in Dallas. The $185 million, 180,000-sf structure is 170 feet tall—equivalent to approximately 14 stories—and is conceived as a large...
| Aug 11, 2010
Piano's 'Flying Carpet'
Italian architect Renzo Piano refers to his $294 million, 264,000-sf Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago as a “temple of light.” That's all well and good, but how did Piano and the engineers from London-based Arup create an almost entirely naturally lit interior while still protecting the priceless works of art in the Institute's third-floor galleries from dangerous ultravio...
| Aug 11, 2010
The Art of Reconstruction
The Old Patent Office Building in Washington, D.C., completed in 1867, houses two Smithsonian Institution museums—the National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum. Collections include portraits of all U.S. presidents, along with paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings of numerous historic figures from American history, and the works of more than 7,000 American artists.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Please Touch Museum at Memorial Hall Philadelphia, Pa.
Built in 1875 to serve as the art gallery for the Centennial International Exhibition in Fairmount Park, Memorial Hall stands as one of the great civic structures in Philadelphia. The neoclassical building, designed by Fairmount Park Commission engineer Hermann J. Schwarzmann, was one of the first buildings in America to be designed according to the principles of the Beaux Arts movement.
