at thirty-six feet, and every time you need more,
just wave up,” he says. “It’s a landscape that wit-nesses what is underneath it.”
The other big idea behind the roof—that it should
be a habitat for native California plants, birds, and
insects—developed more slowly, as Piano’s team
worked with botanists from the museum. The planted roof is not just a wildlife corridor; it also insulates the building, reducing energy consumption,
and absorbs 98 percent of storm-water runoff.
Meanwhile, Piano’s “waves” mean that most of the
building doesn’t need air-conditioning: cool air
from outside flows down the hills and into the
building’s central piazza, while hot air on the exhibit floor rises, hugging the planetarium and rain
forest, and is released through automated skylights
in the hills.
The building’s sustainable features are so deeply
embedded in its design that it’s hard to tell where
the aesthetic concept ends and the green design
begins. Ironically, Piano was not known as a green
architect at the time of his selection. Late in the
design process, when the Academy hired the Rocky
Mountain Institute to find out how much the green
features would cost, it found out that Piano’s design
was just two points away from a LEED Platinum
rating. Neither Piano nor the Academy had heard
much about the U.S. Green Building Council’s
LEED program. They had worked not from a check-list but from a total dedication to the value of sustainability to the Academy’s mission. “We decided
that we would look everywhere to be green,”
Kociolek says. “Whether it was the planetarium,
the aquarium, or the office furniture. There were
no sacred cows.”
This attitude—that even in a 155-year-old scientific institution nothing is sacred—may be what has
allowed the Academy to make its great leap so
gracefully. The old museum was made up of 11
separate buildings constructed during different
eras. Now, one building integrates everything that
the Academy is and does. The aquarium, planetarium, and natural history museum are no longer
separate silos—there are live penguins alongside
the dioramas and a coral reef surrounding the planetarium. A working lab with floor-to-ceiling windows reveals the research process to the public;
scientists will even come out from behind the glass
occasionally to present their work to groups of
museumgoers. And, whether they are walking the
exhibit floor or enjoying the view from the roof’s
observation deck, visitors can see and experience
the park around them, reminding them—should
they need reminding—of that great, green natural-
°science exhibit outside the Academy’s walls.
GOOD DESIGN
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Design Store
44 West 53 Street, NYC
212-767-1050
81 Spring Street, NYC
646-613-1367
MoMAstore.org
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