09.2008
Tim Griffith
Beneath the living roof of Renzo Piano’s new California
Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco, sits the 290-seat
Morrison Planetarium, a 90-foot-diameter dome tilted
at a 30-degree angle to immerse the audience in a high-tech digital universe. “The original Morrison Planetarium, like most planetariums, had a ring of seats around
the outside,” says Stephanie Stone, the museum’s director of communications. “You’d sit and look up at the
night sky. The idea here was: let’s make them feel like
they’re in the middle of space.” To make room for the
25-foot-deep coral reef below, the bottom of the sphere
was sliced off and the planetarium, which is made from
recycled steel, was cantilevered over the water.
