Green Museum to Open in SF
The Living Museum Dedicated to Environmentally Friendly Practices
San Francisco plans to open a new museum in the fall dedicated exclusively to conservation. Environmental exhibits and future energy practices have people talking.
The Museum's Purpose
There is a growing interest in a new “green museum” set to open in San Francisco this fall. The California Academy of Sciences is constructing a $484 million building that will be devoted exclusively to going green and introducing the masses to those things that are protected by green practices. Named The Living Museum the dome-shaped building sits on 2.5 acres near Golden Gate Park and is generating interest before it has even opened.
The museum, while showing the importance of the practices that the human race is said to need to adopt, also remarks on what people should have been doing all along to preserve the planet. It is doing that now, however, by putting the practices it teaches into practice.
Features and Acheivements
Refusing to be hypocritcal, the spherical roof of the building insulates and ventilates the museum on its own through its three domes. The domes are covered in native plant life over top a layer of sod. It was designed by the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano who is also responsible for constructing the Centre Pompidou, a modern-art museum in Paris. He blended ancient technology with modern design to make the building both attractive and functional
Its conservative energy usage is said to be the largest public building ever to be considered for the U.S. Green Building Council’s platinum LEED rating. Currently, only 70 buildings in the world hold that title. LEED stands for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. An LEED committee determines the rating of a building and how environmentally friendly it is. They use a categorical system in order to do this. These categories include sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.
Setting An Example
Other museums are also working to become LEED certified. Los Angeles' Getty Center, Michigan's Grand Rapids Museum of Art, and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in Massachusetts are the few who have achieved certification. The Art Institute of Chicago is looking to gain a silver LEED rating with its new expansion program led by Renzo Piano. The main modifications that these buildings make is in the lighting systems. By installing photocell lighting systems, double-window facades and solar panels, the buildings save on heating, cooling and ventilation.
Visitors will find several rooms filled with green-themed exhibits. The museum plans to include a planetarium, a rain forest complete with free roaming birds, a coral reef containing 4,000 fish and a saltwater aquarium using water pumped from the Pacific Ocean. The museum plans to teach its visitors about how green practices will come into play in the future and how they can begin to live green in their own lives.
