CRANBROOK INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE
Bloomfield Hills, United States. 1998
Description +
PROGRAM: addition to and renovation of existing science museum and educational facility
CLIENT: Cranbrook Educational Community
SIZE: ADDITION & RENOVATION: 30,000 & 64,000 sq ft
STATUS: complete
The new addition opens up the dead end circulation of the existing 1937 galleries; the Hall of Minerals and the Hall of Man. The slipped “U” shape, like the scientific diagram for “strange attractors” allows for multiple paths within the exhibitions and programs. With this concept as an analog, Steven Holl Architects aims for a free and open-ended addition. Its circuits are unique, allowing for the potential that no visit to the new science museum will be a repeat experience, rather each engagement is provocative and unpredictable. The new Institute is centered around an inner garden where scientific phenomena are exhibited in the open air. Within this “Science Garden” is the Story of Water; water in liquid, solid and vapor is featured in flow pools, a “House of Ice,” and a “House of Vapor.” A “light laboratory” forms an entrance hall which functions as a changing exhibit. Different phenomena of light, such as refraction and prismatic coler, as displayed on the lobby walls as the sunlight changes.
Ecological Innovation +
Inner garden allows for scientific phenomena to be exhibited in open-air
Entrance Hall featuring “light laboratory” provides natural lighting and functions as a changing exhibit
Credits +
architect
- Steven Holl Architects
Steven Holl (design architect)
Chris McVoy (project architect)
Hideaki Ariizumi, Tim Bade, Stephen Cassell, Pablo Castro-Estevez, Martin Cox, Janet Cross, Yoh Hanaoka, Lisina Fingerhuth, Bradford Kelley, Jan Kinsbergen, Justin Korhammer, Anna Müller, Tomoaki Tanaka (project team)
engineer
- Ove Arup & Partners
Guy Nordenson (principal in charge)
acoustical consultant
- Arup Acoustics
exhibition designer
- Cranbrook Architecture Office
lighting consultant
- L'Observatoire International
Hervé Descottes (principal)
Dusti Helms (project manager)
landscape architect
- Edmund Hollander Design
- Cranbrook Architecture Office
Peter Osler
civil engineer
- Johnson Johnson & Roy
Charles Gott (associate)
pool consultant
- Dr. Gerald Palevsky
light lab consultant
- James Carpenter Design Assoc.
- R.A. Heintges & Associates
house of ice collaborators/fabricators
- Dan Hoffman
- Alfred Zollinger
construction maganger addition
- O'Neal Construction
construction manager renovation
- Barton Malow Construction Services
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Awards +
- 1999 New York AIA Project Award
- 1995 NYC AIA Design Award
