Fort Worth Museum of Science and History
Client
Fort Worth Museum of Science and History
Fort Worth, TX
The new Fort Worth Museum of Science and History reopens in late 2009 and will showcase many of the more than 175,000 historical objects and scientific specimens in the museum’s permanent collection through visible storage and numerous display areas.
The central distinguishing feature of the new museum will be its highly visible Studio Learning Galleries, which guests will be able to see when they enter the building. Inside these five, glass-walled studios will be a veritable beehive of active learning. The studios will bring into public view several innovative programs currently tucked away in classrooms rarely seen by the guest: including the museum’s DesignIT Studios program for teenagers; Discovery Labs for school children, educator workshops, telescope-building classes, and more. Rotating ExploraZone exhibits from the San Francisco Exploratorium will be at the center of this dynamic learning space.
Another new exhibit space, the Energy Adventure, will integrate the museum’s long-standing dinosaur collections with the story of Fort Worth’s dynamic energy industry to illustrate important geological, scientific and historical concepts.
The Fort Worth Children’s Museum will also be located in the new building. This bright, sunny “museum within a museum” will invite young children to play and explore, with science and art activities similar to those found in the museum’s current KIDSPACE gallery and ample hands-on opportunities to learn from artifacts from the museum’s collections. Just across the corridor will be the outdoor DinoDig area, where children can explore and dig for real fossils while their parents sit and enjoy a cup of coffee while watching them several yards away.
The new building will hold a major new center for the Cattle Raisers Museum, which relocated from its 7th Street location near downtown Fort Worth. It is the result of a new partnership with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Foundation.
A separate Fort Worth history gallery will present dramatic, real stories of the region and southwest, with rotating exhibits on topics ranging from aviation and the city’s growth and development to Native American history and culture.
In the new building, the highly popular Museum School, which offers preschool and elementary school programs that combine science, history and anthropology with art, music and literature, will have its own campus area on the north side close to the Omni Theater. A new emphasis on the museum’s vast collections – making them more visible and accessible – will create rich opportunities for adult learning as well as cross-generational programming. Museum School will have six sunny classrooms and an enclosed courtyard area for play and learning.
The new Noble Planetarium will be unequaled in the southwest region of the United States. Offering the first Zeiss-manufactured hybrid planetarium system, comprised of a star projector ball synchronized with a digital projection system using 3D software, the planetarium’s guests will feel transported to the very edge of the universe.
SELECT FOR ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES OF THIS PROJECT
