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Louisville Children's Museum - Urban Explorer Lab
Louisville Children's Museum - Urban Explorer Lab
Louisville, KY, United States
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Louisville Children's Museum - Urban Explorer Lab
Louisville, KY, United States
Firm
YEAR
2014
International Ideas Competition:
Louisville Children’s Museum, Revitalizing of a Downtown Edge
Revitalization of the surrounding area around the Louisville public library and the design of a new Children's Museum for Louisville, Kentucky, USA. February 2014
Sponsors: Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) and the American Institute of Architects (AIA)
1. Place: BESH studio
Team: Stephan Brugger & Eva M. Hierzer
Graz, Austria
Commentary of the Jury:
„The winning entry was collectively regarded as a proposal that reached beyond preconceptions and expectations for a children’s museum by illustrating a concept that depicted a rich, varied and evolving educational environment for the museum and the city.“
Project Description:
the „Urban Forest“
By adding an urban forest into the midst of the new children's museum, tech-incubator and public library, the area around 3rd Street and Broadway in downtown Louisville will turn into a cultural and recreational centre. This big green space connects every type of use within the area. Instead of contrasting, built with nature, the buildings embrace the urban forest. While the tech-incubator and the parking garage merge with the reforested area, the children's museum clasps itself around and integrates the forest into the building as well as into the exhibition and education concept. Using the trees for natural shading in summer as well as solar gains in winter this urban development becomes a low-tech solution exhibiting sustainable design to the children and the city (natural ventilation, shading and lightning).
Urban Explorer Lab
The building is divided into a 3-storey exhibition zone and its underlying functional base, with the necessary areas for organizational operation as well as external public access to a Café, daycare center, underground parking and the auditorium. On the south-east edge of the ground floor the urban forest follows the topography up to the first floor into the big courtyard. This forest's floor connects the street level, the first floors main entrance to the museum and another entrance to the second floor.
So, what does YOUR Urban Forest look like? This question is raised to the little urban explorers entering the Louisville Children's Museum. Inviting the young visitors to discover and question their immediate surrounding relating to sustainability. Emerging from the spacious foyer on the first floor the main ramp circles around the central forest passing the subject areas nature, environment, technology, media, health, art, culture and social competence up to the upper floors. The buildings internal organisation is designed to allow a wide ranged experience of every topic as well as individual discovery of certain interests. Starting on the first floor with the general fundamentals of each subject – necessary like the trunk of a tree – the path climbs on and on around and up the crowns to the second floors research area and the third floors laboratories. Like the tree's branches the path ramifies into shortcuts, dead ends or cross connections connecting different areas and levels enabling individual discovery paths besides the main route through the building.
Construction
To enable the plantation of big trees and seepage the pluvial water within the buildings courtyard the underground and ground level frame a central generous „plant pot“. On top of the massive concrete ground floor lies the actual exhibiting space made of cross-laminated timber structure.
The facade – an oversized letter case – transports the constantly changing inner life of the museum to the outside. Extensive glass surfaces enabling insights and vistas from the city into the building and the inner courtyard. The city and the forest merge with the overall exhibition concept and create a continuous scenery for the „Urban Explorer Lab“.
Louisville Children’s Museum, Revitalizing of a Downtown Edge
Revitalization of the surrounding area around the Louisville public library and the design of a new Children's Museum for Louisville, Kentucky, USA. February 2014
Sponsors: Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) and the American Institute of Architects (AIA)
1. Place: BESH studio
Team: Stephan Brugger & Eva M. Hierzer
Graz, Austria
Commentary of the Jury:
„The winning entry was collectively regarded as a proposal that reached beyond preconceptions and expectations for a children’s museum by illustrating a concept that depicted a rich, varied and evolving educational environment for the museum and the city.“
Project Description:
the „Urban Forest“
By adding an urban forest into the midst of the new children's museum, tech-incubator and public library, the area around 3rd Street and Broadway in downtown Louisville will turn into a cultural and recreational centre. This big green space connects every type of use within the area. Instead of contrasting, built with nature, the buildings embrace the urban forest. While the tech-incubator and the parking garage merge with the reforested area, the children's museum clasps itself around and integrates the forest into the building as well as into the exhibition and education concept. Using the trees for natural shading in summer as well as solar gains in winter this urban development becomes a low-tech solution exhibiting sustainable design to the children and the city (natural ventilation, shading and lightning).
Urban Explorer Lab
The building is divided into a 3-storey exhibition zone and its underlying functional base, with the necessary areas for organizational operation as well as external public access to a Café, daycare center, underground parking and the auditorium. On the south-east edge of the ground floor the urban forest follows the topography up to the first floor into the big courtyard. This forest's floor connects the street level, the first floors main entrance to the museum and another entrance to the second floor.
So, what does YOUR Urban Forest look like? This question is raised to the little urban explorers entering the Louisville Children's Museum. Inviting the young visitors to discover and question their immediate surrounding relating to sustainability. Emerging from the spacious foyer on the first floor the main ramp circles around the central forest passing the subject areas nature, environment, technology, media, health, art, culture and social competence up to the upper floors. The buildings internal organisation is designed to allow a wide ranged experience of every topic as well as individual discovery of certain interests. Starting on the first floor with the general fundamentals of each subject – necessary like the trunk of a tree – the path climbs on and on around and up the crowns to the second floors research area and the third floors laboratories. Like the tree's branches the path ramifies into shortcuts, dead ends or cross connections connecting different areas and levels enabling individual discovery paths besides the main route through the building.
Construction
To enable the plantation of big trees and seepage the pluvial water within the buildings courtyard the underground and ground level frame a central generous „plant pot“. On top of the massive concrete ground floor lies the actual exhibiting space made of cross-laminated timber structure.
The facade – an oversized letter case – transports the constantly changing inner life of the museum to the outside. Extensive glass surfaces enabling insights and vistas from the city into the building and the inner courtyard. The city and the forest merge with the overall exhibition concept and create a continuous scenery for the „Urban Explorer Lab“.
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