“Museums are highly
conditioned spaces,
because of the loads of
visitors, and because of
the collections that they’re
trying to protect,” says
Jean Rogers, a sustainability consultant at Arup.
THE PLANETARIUM
The west end of the sloped seating
bowl (above) cantilevers out to support the dome’s steel structure (left).
mode of ventilation—collections that are protected
but public spaces that are naturally ventilated and
open and breathing, and in existence with the outside environment—it’s very, very unusual. Renzo
was probably still thinking of it as a glass box
with a green roof.”
The grand idea for the museum might have been
settled on, but engineering a wildly rolling roof
that could support 1. 7 million plants in a half foot
of water-saturated soil—and be porous enough to
allow for light and air to pass through—was a long
and difficult process. Just determining the number, size, and placement of the skylights above the
rain-forest and coral-reef exhibitions took months
of computer modeling. “People wanted to maximize the number of louvers in the sides of the
skylights, but then there were structural engineers
that didn’t want those big holes in the roof diaphragm,” Lassetter says. “And these spaces are
all naturally ventilated, so we didn’t want lots of
glass letting the sunlight in and, therefore, the
solar gain upsetting it.”
One of the main challenges throughout the project was balancing green architecture with the
needs of a research institution and museum whose
collection of 20 million specimens demands strict
regulation. Sometimes those goals were complementary. If you compare a glass of water from one
of its fish tanks with a sample from a conventional
aquarium, you’ll find a lot more stuff floating in
the Academy’s. That’s because most aquariums
want their tanks to be perfectly clear under the
bright lights trained on them. For the Academy,
A three-and-a-half-mile pipeline from the ocean to
the Academy supplies the aquarium with seawater.
Joe Brennan, former head of operations, stands at
the entrance to the underground pump station.
more heat out. Computer-controlled actuators operate banks of 4,000 windows, opening and closing
them as needed throughout the day. “As the building
breathes, they will move,” Lassetter says.
The scheme ideally suits San Francisco, where
high summer temperatures average in the 60s.
Even with a glass facade, about 40 percent of the
Academy is naturally ventilated, and 90 percent
of regularly occupied spaces have daylight. “
Museums are very, very highly conditioned spaces,
both because of the loads of visitors, and also
because of the collections that they’re trying to
protect,” Rogers says. “So this idea of having a mixed
WATER
INFRASTRUCTURE
CRYSTAL
CLEAR
3/4 INCH
There’s a reason the Academy’s Steinhart Aquarium was
long famous for its aquatic environments: a three-and-a-half-mile pipeline through Golden Gate Park supplies the
museum with crystal-clear oceanwater. When the aquarium was originally built in 1923, a pipeline was installed to
bring Bay water into the museum. By the time the building
was renovated in 1963, the quality of the water had begun
to decline, so a long trench was dug through the park
(something that could never be done today) to a pumping
station built at nearby Ocean Beach. “The pipes are buried beneath the sand, and they have holes punctured in
them,” explains John McCosker, a senior scientist at the
Academy and the former director of the aquarium. “About
eight feet of sand overlays these three extended pipes,
so when the water enters the system, it has been filtered
by the sand. And it’s beautiful, high-quality ocean water.”
Sidebar photo, courtesy the California Academy of Sciences; others, courtesy Arup
3/4 INCH
In a major earthquake the Academy
is designed to move as much as three-quarters of an inch in any direction.
