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The fertile invention of our age, and its teachers, seems to be especially devoted to removing all possible obstacles, and throwing all possible light on the once difficult and toilsome paths to the temple of science. Andrew Jackson Downing, 1848

Top gnd above: HEB Stinc* Tinhorn*, Wide Museum, Son Anlonio, Lokt/Floto, orchilcrti, 1997.

C I T E llmlyEighi S H I M I H 119

Acity can be an extraordinary envi-ronment lor learning. Interdepen-dence and the density ol physical

contact historically provide one ol the attractions ol urban lite. I'dgar Ciiunbert, in an article "The ( it) as I ducator," wrote about the educational potential of the streets ot Paris and Florence, which

I developed as intense!) pedestrianized j cities, inviting "people to stroll about, I with or without aim or purpose, to lake

in rather than reject impressions, to think and to feel) to enjoy, to mix, to see and be seen"1 — m short, to make the cit) and its diverse composition an open and visible pan ot everyday experience,

I.ven with its openness eroded by pri-vatization and its functions recast into invisible networks ot electronic transmis-sions, the city ot today remains the pri-mary place where one can find contact with the greatest array ol resources in political, economic, social, cultural, .\\K\ technical realms. Ciena in places in the city stand out as being particular educa tional partners to the schools, Often act-ing as classrooms by another name, they are frequently destinations for school field trips, much anticipated (by the stu-dents) as respites Irom the tedium of classroom routines. Museums ol art art-primary examples, containing samples ot the real sinl l . which young people can experience first hand. These are reveren-tial places lor the most pari, calling toi special behaviors ,is children learn that in such palates ol culture one speaks in a whisper, touches nothing, and sup-presses giggles when confronting a Renaissance nude.

In the Classical breakdown of knowl-edge, science has no exact equivalent to the art museum, liven though the eon rents ol a science museum are more like those of a hardware or computer store. earl) science museum models emulated certain characteristics of an an museum — heavy on artifacts, dioramas, and taxi-dermy. They were presided over by a priestly class of adult scientists who were able to give demonstrations and make apparatus perform, presenting scientific phenomena as abstract and incomprehen-sible, hence more magical to behold.

The Huh I Planetarium and Science C enter in Pittsburgh, my first introduc-tion to one of these places ot science, was housed in a solid, windowless block of stone with great bronze doors that sealed the entire place up tight when the day's

work was done. In its weightiness and simple, somber lines, it resembled an I g) ptian temple or Masonic hall, coun-terpoint to the equally weighty ncoclassi-cistn of the Carnegie Museum of Art. In deference to a belief in the enduring validity of scientific principles, the main hall of the buhl was built to .ucomnio date two icons of science. The first con-firmed the rotation of the earth. It was a large working model of I oucault's Pendulum with an inexorably swinging pendulum that successively knocked over a circle ol black pegs sel in a shallow well. The other, a ten-foot-tall Telsa Coil, was fired off every half hour by one ot the scientists tor the edification ot school children gathered around. It looked like a prop from the reammation scene in a Frankenstein film. All around tins hall were little glass windows fram-ing \ lews into exhibits ot entombed instruments and miniature dioramas depicting moments ol triumph and dis u « LI i ill science.

I he mysterious planetarium theater provided, through its marvelous, human oidal projection machine, .1 ceiling of celestial performers in zoomorphk for illations like a half-time show at a foot-ball game. A visit to the Huh I was the equivalent of going to church; fully con-vinced young minds thought they had visited sacred ground.

Today, museums of science are radi-cally different. Taking lessons from the success of theme parks, they have become centers of entertainment where fun is used to disguise the fact that learning is taking place. The recent evolution ol the I louston's Museum of Natural Science, once a stuffy warehouse tor a collection oi inanimate objects such as oil drill bits, is a case in point. Everyday was a slow <.\.\) until the museum began to add first -class attractions. Animated dinosaurs (not quite up to Speilberg standards but more compelling than skeletons] visited. Then the 1MAX theater (equally good lor showing Arctic ecology or a Rolling Stones concert) opened, anil finally the Cockrell Butterfly Center made its debut. Along the way a host ol new exhibits and activity centers, including a NASA space Might simulation room, were installed, making the museum a bus) plan ever) da) ot the week. Summer classes at the science museum are almost as popular as a da) at the beach.

A major part ol the museum move-ment in recent years has been directed at addressing the predilections of children's cult me. In a manner similar to the way Marie Antoinette's bameau in a corner park at Versailles simulated the rural realities of an agricultural hamlet, a chil-dren's museum offers up miniaturized and more entertaining versions of the adult world. Kobert Harbison wrote a hour how the hamlet at Versailles was "stalled b\ a lew larmers who supervised ilie ladies' fantastic games. In the biggest

and flimsiest of the mock-cottages, the queen and most privileged women in the land made butter and cheese in silver con tamers resting on marble counters, or more likely gave a few desultory turns and left the process to be completed by an underling."3

Houston's first children's museum featured a scaled down supermarket (complete with |imior-xized shopping carts I where children could mimic adult shopping habits, gathering up a selection of items Irom the shelves, delivering I hem to a checkout counter, and paying with play money. That was before Robert Ventnri turned the corner at Binz and I a branch, just a lew blocks from the city's majoi an museums, into Kiddie (Classicism, setting up the Children's Museum ol I jousrou in a quintessential example of the decorated shed.

In the baekv.inl ol San Antonio's ven-erable VC'itte Historical Museum archi-tects Lake/I lato recentl) fashioned anoth-er version ot a junior museum, this one designed to resemble a children's play-house. 1 he IIKB Science 1 reehouse is well situated on the edge of the San Antonio River in line with several historic houses that are part ot the exhibit collection on the 4.4-acrc Witie Museum campus. Unlike I louston's Children's Museum, which is more formally organized and artful, the Science Trcchouse is deliberate b anti-formal, like the improvised con-

: Wille Museum, 3801 Broodwoy, Son Antonio; Humanities auditorium in foreground.

structions children make with a set of toy building blocks. The building invites numerous interpretations seeded by images and fragments of castles, old houses. Victorian industrial buildings, ami vernacular colonial architecture bun-dled together into a kind of architectural puzzle. The materials and construction methods used tor the Ireehouse borrow from local s raits and building traditions, including native limestone and sandstone, colorful clay tile roots, brick and stone banding, stucco, lightweight steel bridging structures, and copper roofing. Inside, the sense ol craft is more specimenlike, with handmade copper lighting sconces, stone Mooring, glazed tiles, and assembled metal work in a high-lech matrix with exposed lighting tracks and ductwork. The foregrounding ot design elements even extends to the mechanical systems. On the second level the architects installed Air Sox fabric ducts, .\\\ inge-nious new Oldenberglike soft duct sys-tem, which is shaped by air pressure — a built-in physics demonstration.

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Instead " I assembling its exh ib i t spaces side bv side a long .i card ina l axis, the I I I K Science Center piles them in to a four-s tory ar rangement w i t h each level ar t icu la ted l ike the house m Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics • •/ Space.* The low-ce i l inged basement houses an assem-bly r o o m (or demonst ra t ions and lec-tures. A t one end , a smal l skyl i t niche contains a geological wa l l w i t h drawers con ta in ing sample art i facts Found at vari (His t ime intervals represented in a s imu-lated geological strata. t ons t ruc t tng the bu i l d ing on r iver hank soil posed special founda t ion p rob lems, w h i c h the archi-tects solved bv floating the bu i l d ing <iii a 50-inch concrete slab, creat ing a s t rong stereotomic base l ike a hu l l o f a concrete ship.

The g round - f l oo r entry hal l is a ta l l a i n t i m con ta in ing the ob l iga to ry museum store and a rout ine co l lec t ion of hands-on exhib i ts demons t ra t ing basic mechani-cal pr incip les — a wave ladder, gears, l i f t -yourse l f -up pul leys, and the l ike. [ w o entrances, one ( rum the W i t t e com-p o u n d , [he oi l ier a side entrance w i t h porte-cochere tor school ch i ldren brought by bus, are p rom inen t on the exter ior but discretely h idden on the inter ior , deflect-ing at tent ion t o w a r d the wa l l o f w i n d o w s and observat ion porch a long the river.

The second level, a rectangular lofi space, is super imposed o n t o the more id iosyncrat ic first level p lan , creat ing over lapp ing doub le -vo lume spaces over the pr imary entrance lobb) and Stairw.iv, where a tennis bal l launcher pneumat ica l ly sends tennis balls past the second level Floor. A double-he ight w i n -dow beyond looks ou t o n t o the water court where l ivdro log ic . i l phenomena inv i te play. Exh ib i ts on this level d e m o n -strate more current scientif ic advances, i nc lud ing l iber opt ics, lasers, video micro-scopes, and e lect ro-magnet ism. The Internet Sur f ing Stat ion in a separate at t ic r o o m otters several compu te r stat ions.

A n a r r o w bridge connects the second level to the treehouse, a nom ina l t o k o n o -

HEB Stitnct TreehoiiK.

ma for the bu i l d ing . I he tree-house, paid for out of the art bud-get, is an open-ai r pav i l i on perched in a f e r r o e c m c u l tree analogous to the WI 'A - f i nanccd concrete trees nearby. The root ot the treehouse is the most in t r igu-ing level. It is a sky p la /a w i t h .1 col lect ion ot smal l bu i ld ings hous-ing a conservatory, a greenhouse,

a bughouse, and a grate-metal observat ion deck, wh i ch hangs precar iously over the river below. The roo f landscape is remi-niscent o f the marvelous complex i t ies o l the roofscapes in old Parisian townhouse neighborhoods where gables, lofts, and • •ilit i constructed spaces en an a Si t iei /one o f top-deck backyards.

The mu l t i p l i c i t y of images and dehber-ati ly mixed metaphors thai make a bui ld ing i l i . i t is more than the sum of its parts is a credit to the ski l l of the architects. Hut there is so much on the exter ior and inte-r ior o f l lns compact structure thai the exh ib i ts seem super f luous. The architec-tura l accompl ishment and the splendors o f a r iverside sett ing make the bu i l d i ng usell the central a t t rac t ion . Th is is not necessaril) a bad thing given that what goes on inside is not really engaging enough to r iva l the compe l l i ng images o n T V or in the movies. The sensorial exper i -ence o f t ravers ing the th in br idge to the rough t u t treehouse or overhang ing the river on a metal grate f loo r are genuinely engaging adventures. Disney hasn't done it any better. but compared to the hyped-up , commerc ia l ized experiences ot a Disney theme pa rk , the adventure here is sof t -pedaled, ,u\A the kids seem to be 111

control It's d i f f i cu l t to k n o w wha t w i l l ho ld

a chi ld's interest. 1 have seen ch i ld ren p lay ing qui te contentedly for hours in a puddle <•! mud or w i t h a pi le ot scrap lumber, making quite amazing discoveries and const ruct ions. I have also seen them dest roy ing equ ipment set up specif ical ly to enterta in them. A conc lus ion is thai chi l dreu seek to max im ize negative en t ropy in a given s i tua t ion ; they d ismant le r ig id sys-tems o f order to create more open-ended possibi l i t ies. Such an insight created the adventure p laygrounds ot the sixties, where a f ield o f unpremedi ta ted wha t -have-you was established so that play Could become the creative enterprise it was meant to be.

It is also d i f f i cu l t to say how the m ind of a ch i ld w o r k s when it t omes to

matters o f archi tecture. To decode a chi l dren's museum one might f ind its e tymo l -og j simply by imag in ing it ref i t ted tor o ther purposes. In the I I IT> Science t enter I had the dist inct feel ing that the bu i l d ing cou ld easily be a theme restau-rant where eat ing is a k i n d of theatr ica l experience. Mode rn i s m envisioned a w o r l d un i f ied a round invar ian t p r inc i -ples; post modern ism imagined It coming apart and imposed mixed places and themes. I he essential idea behind a muse-um is that it is possible to create vantage points f r o m wh ich to peer in to a subject, or at least enough of it to be able to con-struct the rest for yourself. The uncer-tainty ot this pos i t ion has been magni f ied by both the increasing indeterminacy o f subject matter and by the compet ing voices o f author i ty . This hedging at t i tude t o w a rd museum contents is precisely the way a ch i ld constructs the w o r l d . A t ten t i on deficit is the n o r m , ami the most curators hope for is that the ch i l d w i l l run th rough the place, spending a momen t or t w o on one th i ng before look-ing out of the corner o f his or her eye for what to do next. Th is is the prescr ip t ion tor an archi tecture ot restless comp lex i t y and ambigu i ty , and , in a ch i l d , the archi -tect may have to t iud the perfect c l ient for this k ind ot idea,

But , in the end , all these museum wonders esisi in the w o r l d outs ide in a cont inuous landscape where il is impossi-ble to d i f ferent iate between a m a l l , a theme pa rk , a restaurant , o r a chi ldren's museum, but driving out along the indust r ia l landscape of route 22 S past v\ li.H seem to be v .|s| b rood ing cities o i un imaginab le boldness, places populated not by structures marred by the vague-ness ot contemporary archi tecture but by the purpose-bui l t labyr in ths o f appl ied science, may pose a lar greater challenge to the m ind o f a ch i ld than what goes on inside these l i t t le wo r l ds o f chi ldren's science.

Creat ing a science museum a round a theme o f behind-the-scenes real i ty was a gu id ing pr inc ip le for San I'raucisco's Exploratorium, an innovative science museum and w o r k s h o p tucked inside the belly ot Bernard May beck's Palace of l i n e Arts designed for the 1915 Pan-Pacific Expos i t ion . The in ter ior t ransfor -m a t i o n of the stenographic beaux-Ar ts bui ld ings bustles w i t h a dynamic and messy v i ta l i ty l ike a vast inventor 's w o r k s imp, lit contrast to the sl ick, designer

Hie Enplointorium, Po int Pr int , Sun F iami i io . Caliloinin.

look o i most museum exhib i ts , those in the E x p l o r a t o r i u m looked surpr is ing ly homemade. They emanated f rom the w o r k i n g labs and workshops a round the perimeter, w h i c h were stal led by real research scientists, technic ians, teachers, and exh ib i t designers. O n one visit to the l -Ap lo ra to r ium, I l o l l owed a t ra i l of ascending cogn i t ive objects on the topic o f opt ica l physics that included a hands-on exhib i t ot lenses, a d iag rammat i c dis-play exp la in ing the lens concept , a n d . finally, a visceral demons t ra t ion by a staff member w h o dissected a cow eyebal l .

Most science museums del iver their experiences in an easier f o r m , one less related to the scientist's lab than to the commerc ia l hyper-rcal iues ot museum cul ture. The great French an th ropo log is t ( T u n i c l.cvi-Strauss was struck by a cer tain ingenuity he found in Amer ican museums, 1 le w ro te , " n o t being able, or not a lways, to acquire wha t o ld Europe-had considered first choice, . . Amer ica had managed to make a v i r tue of necessi-ty by d iscover ing first choices in domains that we had neglected. One such was the natura l sciences."^ O f par t icu la r interest 10 Siranss were the popu la r early twen t i -eth-century d io ramas where " b e h i n d glass panes that were several yari ls high and w ide , one cou ld see scrupulous reconstruct ions of Amer i can . A f r i c a n , and Asian fauna in their na tura l habi -ta ts . " Strauss wondered whether hyper-realism might not have existed e n i b r y o m -cally in these d io ramas. Such scenes have escaped f rom the aesthetically d is tanc ing Frame ami glass and become the icoui t content tor an archi tecture o l collected top ics o l experience. •

I. Edgar Curnbert," I he Qt j as I dm ition ,nul Urban Satiety (November 19711,

p. in. - . Robert I larhiaon, I hi Built, the Unbuilt and

the Unbnildable: hi Pursuit • •/ \rchitetturat Weaning 11 ondom I haraes and I bidion, 19911, p. - 1 .

1, (..isiim Bachdard, Vlte Pontics a) Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 19S9(, Chapter 1. pp. ^-17.

•1. t Limit I i n Strauss, "New York in I'M I " in The View from Afar (New Vorki Bask II....!.-.. less), p. 264.