NEW OPENING: PEROT MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE
THE BUILDING IS THE 12TH EXHIBIT. WE NEEDED IT TO BE A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WHERE MAN MEETS NATURE, SO SELECTED A DESIGNER, RATHER THAN A DESIGN, WHO COMPLETELY UNDERSTOOD OUR MISSION
competition to select a designer, rather than the design – that process came later – to ensure we’d be working with someone who completely understood our mission. We picked Thom Mayne because he’s incredibly innovative and inventive. We liked his choice of materi- als and the fact that he was a professor. His design was inspired by nature.
Different geologic formations are refl ected in the pre-cast concrete exterior and the landscape design rep- resents many eco regions around Texas. The living roof is a one-acre water
collection system. We’ve just been called the greenest building in Texas, which supports our environmental aims. Everything about the building repre- sents our mission. For the interior, we looked at great
museums all over the world to get ideas about the type of place we wanted to create. We worked closely with three exhibit design fi rms – Amaze Design, Paul Bernhard Exhibit Design and Associates and Science Museum of Minnesota – to create this concept.
How is the museum sustainable? The building is a teaching tool about sustainability. The landscape design, by Talley Associates, serves as an exten- sion of the building design and includes indigenous plant species. It’s integrated with the ground fl oor lobby and café spaces via the plaza areas, providing a seamless merger between the natural landscape and artifi cially-made environ- ment of the building. Other environmental elements include
a rainwater collection system fi lling 50,000-gallon cisterns to supply the irrigation system; solar-powered hot water heating; and material choices emphasising recycled and locally sourced materials. We also built on a former Brownfi eld site. We have three green building certi-
fi cations: LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design); Green Globes; and Sustainable Sites Initiative.
What have been the challenges? Coordinating everyone could be a chal- lenge at times. We had so many great
AM 2 2013 ©cybertrek 2013
The glass-enclosed escalator overlooks downtown Dallas
partners with different and wonder- ful ways of thinking. Working with all these vendors allowed everyone to push each other’s thinking, which resulted in a tremendous project that came in on budget – and we were actually able to open a little earlier than planned. Now that we’re open, the challenge
is coping with the volume of traffi c. It’s more than we’d expected – we’ve had 350,000 visitors since opening on 1st December – so we’re having to adjust our guest service and our operations to make sure we can accommodate that number of visitors and still provide a really positive visitor experience. We can house about 2,000 people at a time and over the course of the day can have up to 10,000 visitors. This can become a challenge when people stay for fi ve or six hours, which some do. However, this is a good problem to have.
How is the museum funded? The entire US$185m (£122.5m, 145m) was raised privately from individu- als and corporations. The museum is named after Margot and Ross Perot,
thanks to a $50m (£33.1m, 39m) donation from their fi ve grown up chil- dren. The Perots are a long-time family in our community and have been incred- ibly philanthropic over the years. We had a connective with them in a variety of ways and were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take them to see the Houston Museum of Natural Science. They were excited about envis- aging what a science museum could be. Mrs Perot had been a teacher, so has a great appreciation for education, and Mr Perot founded multiple technology com- panies, so their children felt this was a wonderful way to honour their parents. We’re incredibly lucky to have such
wonderful partners, many of whom we’ve been able to thank by naming sections of the museum after them. An endowment has been created for the museum’s upkeep.
What’s the education programme? We worked closely with teacher advi- sory committees, who helped us determine the content for the exhibit hall as well as the curriculum for edu-
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PHOTO: MARK KNIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
PHOTO OPPOSITE PAGE: (TOP) JASON JANIK; (BOTTOM) MARK KNIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
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