Renzo Piano's new Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco is bursting with green technology and alive with plants.
"Inside the sober exterior of the California Academy of Sciences, an elevator plunges through four stories of rain forest into a glass-tunnel swamp alive with wriggling armored catfish and spotted peacock bass. It's the most fun you could have while being hectored to save the planet.
The academy opens its sparkling new building in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on Sept. 27, replacing a complex severely damaged in a 1989 earthquake. It's a research institution, but to the public it is an occasionally unwieldy combination of the Kimball Natural History Museum, Steinhart Aquarium and Morrison Planetarium. Every penny of its hefty $488 million cost is on view, gorgeously packaged by the Italian architect Renzo Piano.
Its overarching messages are the essential role of evolution in the work of the natural sciences and the urgency of addressing global climate change. In Piano's design, the medium is the message."
Read the full story: Swamp Things Slither in $488 Million California Science Museum
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Kerfluffle Over Green Building Rating Systems
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Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.
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Chicago city vehicles are on the hunt for illegally-parked cars
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Small single-family homes are illegal in most of MA. Voters can change that
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FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
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One Hundred Miles
County of Mendocino
planning NEXT
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
Montrose County
Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA)
The Pocatello Development Authority