BY LYDIA LEE
San Francisco?s Exploratorium discovers its outdoor spaces.
FROM THE APRIL 2017 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.
One of the most popular exhibits at San Francisco?s Exploratorium is an immersive experience of the city?s iconic fog. When you walk along the 150-foot-long Fog Bridge by the artist Fujiko Nakaya, you disappear into a white mist generated by 800 tiny nozzles. ?When everything is fogged up around you, it?s a wonderful ?noticing? tool,? says Tom Rockwell, the Exploratorium?s director of exhibits and media studio. ?You notice the change in temperature, the air currents, the light.?
It?s fitting that the Exploratorium, one of the original hands-on museums, encourages visitors to engage directly with the wild. The foundation for its outdoor exhibits is a series of broad decks around the waterfront museum?more than an acre of hardscape?designed by the San Francisco firm GLS Landscape | Architecture. Notably, most of the outdoor areas are accessible by the public and don?t require a ticket for admission. They fulfill a state mandate for public waterfront access, but they are also an important part of the museum?s mission to connect with a much wider community beyond its paying attendees. The spaces are testing grounds for outdoor installations destined for other parts of the city and even other towns: little placemaking ambassadors for science and culture. The multiplicity of uses for the Exploratorium?s outdoor spaces is a reminder that the landsc...