Last December, the 100-year-old Cleveland Museum of Natural History completed an $8.9 million overhaul of its Thelma and Kent H. Smith Environmental Courtyard and the upgrade of its 450-seat Murch Auditorium. The courtyard was one of several “gateway” projects that have been interim stages of a $150 million expansion and renovation of the Museum, whose new 50,000-sf Exhibit Hall, main lobby, and café are scheduled to break ground this Thursday.
Sonia Winner, the Museum’s President and CEO, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the institution was also planning an $11.4 million upgrade of its central utility plant.
Since 1958, when the Museum moved to its current location, it has expanded at least six times. The latest expansion, designed by DLR Group, will feature a curving, snow-white roof made from cast-concrete panels and intended to evoke the glacier that covered Northeast Ohio during the last ice age. (Panzica Construction is the GC on this project.)
The museum’s latest expansion and renovation will create new exhibits, developed by Gallagher & Associates, and add curatorial posts for the purposes of connecting, in new ways, the Museum’s collections and research with public education and programming.
A rendering of the Museum's Planetary Process Gallery. The Museum's exhibit reorganization will attempt to connect humanity to the larger universe. Image: Gallagher & Associates
RETELLING HISTORY’S MARCH
The museum, which pre-pandemic was drawing 260,000 visitors annually, holds more than five million artifacts and specimens, and, through its Natural Areas program, stewards more than 11,000 acres of nature preserve in Northeast Ohio. Massive new exterior glass walls will wrap around the addition’s façade to open sightlines between the exhibits and the surrounding landscape of Wade Oval.
Inside, the traditional museum organization—by time period, geography, and species—is being deconstructed to tell integrated stories of planetary and biological processes.
The goal of this “reinvention” is to show more clearly how humanity intersects with the continuum of life on Earth and universal forces.
“We are creating a new model for natural history museums that uses the past to inform our present to build a better future together,” explains Winner. “Our reimagined museum will illuminate the interconnectedness of human life and the natural world, and how science is essential to our lives.”
An “environmental courtyard,” which received an $8.9 million makeover, now serves as one of the Museum's gateways. Image: Cleveland Museum of Natural History
EVOLUTION ON DISPLAY
The museum addition (parts of which are scheduled to open next year) is being constructed on what currently is a parking lot, and will include a central welcome and orientation area, another gateway. The new Visitors Hall will feature a reconstruction of “Lucy,” the 3.2-million-year-old human ancestor that a team of Cleveland museum scientists first discovered 45 years ago, as well as a geological sample collected from the Moon, and specimens of modern-day animals to illustrate evolutionary and biological changes.
A new self-guided interactive space, The Ames Family Curiosity Center, is meant to connect the museum’s collections with its visitors’ lived experiences and global science-related news.
The addition and renovation should be completed sometime in 2024.
Each of the Museum's exhibitions will be part of a larger evolutionary story. Image: DLR Group
Related Stories
| Mar 29, 2012
Construction completed on Las Vegas’ newest performing arts center
The Smith Center will be the first major multi-purpose performance center in the U.S. to earn Silver LEED certification.
| Mar 5, 2012
Franklin Institute in Philadelphia selects Skanska to construct new pavilion
The building has been designed by SaylorGregg Architects and will apply for LEED Silver certification.
| Dec 5, 2011
Summit Design+Build begins renovation of Chicago’s Esquire Theatre
The 33,000 square foot building will undergo an extensive structural remodel and core & shell build-out changing the building’s use from a movie theater to a high-end retail center.
| Nov 9, 2011
Lincoln Center Pavilion wins national architecture and engineering award
The project team members include owner Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York; design architect and interior designer of the restaurant, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York; executive architect, FXFOWLE, New York; and architect and interior designer of the film center, Rockwell Group, New York; structural engineer Arup (AISC Member), New York; and general contractor Turner Construction Company (AISC Member), New York.
| Oct 12, 2011
BIM Clarification and Codification in a Louisiana Sports Museum
The Louisiana State Sports Hall of Fame celebrates the sporting past, but it took innovative 3D planning and coordination of the future to deliver its contemporary design.
| Oct 12, 2011
Consigli Construction breaks ground for Bigelow Laboratory Center for Ocean Health
Consigli to build third phase of 64-acre Ocean Science and Education Campus, design by WBRC Architects , engineers in association with Perkins + Will
| Sep 12, 2011
Living Buildings: Are AEC Firms up to the Challenge?
Modular Architecture > You’ve done a LEED Gold or two, maybe even a LEED Platinum. But are you and your firm ready to take on the Living Building Challenge? Think twice before you say yes.
| Apr 13, 2011
Expanded Museum of the Moving Image provides a treat for the eyes
The expansion and renovation of the Museum of the Moving Image in the Astoria section of Queens, N.Y., involved a complete redesign of its first floor and the construction of a three-story 47,000-sf addition.
| Apr 12, 2011
Entrance pavilion adds subtle style to Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
A $13 million gift from the Otis Booth Foundation is funding a new entrance pavilion at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. CO Architects, Los Angeles, is designing the frameless structure with an energy-efficient curtain wall, vertical suspension rods, and horizontal knife plates to make it as transparent as possible.
| Jan 21, 2011
Sustainable history center exhibits Fort Ticonderoga’s storied past
Fort Ticonderoga, in Ticonderoga, N.Y., along Lake Champlain, dates to 1755 and was the site of battles in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. The new $20.8 million, 15,000-sf Deborah Clarke Mars Education Center pays homage to the French magasin du Roi (the King’s warehouse) at the fort.
