Children's Museum Expansion

[statler]

Originally Posted by The Globe

Ceremony tops off big day for Children's Museum

By Michael Hardy, Globe Correspondent | August 29, 2006

Visitors to the Boston Children's Museum yesterday morning witnessed a curious scene: A festive crowd of people, many dressed in overalls and hard hats, many others in three-piece suits, stood on the boardwalk outside the museum watching a crane slowly hoist a white-washed steel I-beam into the air. Mounted on the far left end of the beam was a diminutive Christmas tree, perhaps two feet high. A miniature American flag was attached to the beam's other end.

When the beam was brought into place at the top of a three-story-high steel frame, the crowd cheered loudly.

The ceremony was a scaled-down version of what is alternately called the ``topping out" or ``topping off" of a building, which marks the moment when the top-most steel beam will be placed. The workers, architects, and any visiting dignitaries sign the beam, which is then ornamented with a tree and a flag and raised to the roof.

Of course, not all topping - off ceremonies and not all trees are created equal. The new wing of the Children's Museum isn't the Empire State Building, and the potted evergreen currently perched on its roof isn't exactly the Rockefeller Center giant.

The inclusion of a tree derives from the ancient Native American belief that no building should be taller than the tallest tree.

Unless it derives from ancient Viking evergreen-worship.

Or the ancient Egyptian practice of placing a live plant atop a pyramid to commemorate the slaves who died building it.

No one really knows how the tree got involved. But it's now an integral part of large-scale American building projects, such as the new 23,000- square-foot wing of the Children's Museum, which will feature a restaurant, new exhibit halls, and sweeping views of Fort Point Channel.

Earlier yesterday, the beam rested across four sawhorses on the museum's new boardwalk, where about 50 people, including museum staffers, architects from Cambridge Seven Associates , engineers from Shawmut Design and Construction , and members of Local 7 of the Ironworkers Union , had gathered for the occasion.

One by one, they approached the I-beam to sign their name s . Some left short messages: ``Beam Me Up." Most often, ``Local 7."

Jack Cameron, the senior project superintendent, said he hadn't attended a topping-off ceremony since 2002, when he worked on the Codman Square Health Center .

``It's an ironworkers tradition that dates back to the beginning of time, really," Cameron said. ``Or at least the beginning of organized labor." He said the crew would leave the tree up through this weekend, then give it to the museum. Cameron said he'd like the museum to plant it next to a plaque commemorating the ceremony.

In other ways, the museum has tried to tailor the construction experience to its young clientele. When the new wing began to go up in April, the subcontractors hired by Shawmut sat through a half-day of diversity and sensitivity training , where they were taught how to operate a ``children-friendly" construction site, said Margaret Neil, Shawmut's vice president for client development.

``Children-friendly" means no swearing, no fighting, no smoking, and definitely no wolf whistles to attractive pedestrians. Pictures of many of the workers are on display inside the museum and children are invited to observe the construction through windows on the second floor.

``We've tried to bring the construction team into the museum environment a little more than is usually done," said Peter Kuttner , a principal at Cambridge Seven Associates.

Chuck Eisenhardt, the museum's director of information technology, wore a windbreaker and a Harvard 35-year-reunion cap as he signed the beam.

``I saw every plank go down on this boardwalk ," Eisenhardt said. ``This is like D-Day [for the new wing]."

As a few late arrivals rushed to sign the beam, workers in hard hats unscrewed the pieces of wood securing it to the sawhorses. At a signal, the crane began lifting the beam into the air. When the beam was about six feet off the ground, the crane's operator stopped to let some of the workers pose for a photo. A banner reading ``Topping Off: An Ironworkers Tradition" hung in the middle of the group portrait.

After the ceremonial raising of the beam, after the applause and the exchanged congratulations, after the boxes of doughnuts and cups of coffee, the crowd began to disperse. The museum staff filed back inside. The architects, engineers, and executives drove back to their offices.

And the ironworkers, the toast of the ceremony, marched dutifully through a door in the construction fence back to the job site, carrying lunch pails and electric drills. One worker could even be spotted, contra children-friendly policy, smoking a cigarette.

Michael Hardy can be reached at mhardy@globe.com.

Link

[statler]

The Children's Museum's website has a wholce section dedicated to the expansion.

Coming in 2007

[bostonman]

Boston Children's Museum gets funds for expansion
Boston Business Journal - 12:32 PM EDT Tuesday

The museum is constructing a 23,000-square-foot addition, a new theater and new exhibitions in arts, culture, science, math, health and fitness in its historic 150,000-square-foot former mill building.

It is the first major expansion for the museum since it relocated to Fort Point Channel in downtown Boston from Burroughs Street in Jamaica Plain in 1979.

Museum officials estimate a spring 2007 opening date for the new additions.

MassDevelopment Tuesday announced it will provide a $30 million financing package for the project.

[xec]

[ckb]

Well ... its looking just like they said it would.

Hmm.

Oh Boy.

Rectangles.

Looks like the milk bottle got a facelift?

[xec]

[kz1000ps]

Originally Posted by Bizjournal

Children's Museum thinks green during renovations

Boston Business Journal - March 23, 2007
by Naomi R. Kooker - Journal Staff

The Boston Children's Museum has returned to the fund-raising pool to go green.

The museum board, which is spending $47 million to construct a new addition and renovate its 118-year-old building, approved the efforts to go green and reach for a silver LEED certification as part of the federal government's benchmark for design and operation of green buildings.
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If certified, the organization would be the first green museum in Boston (though the Museum of Science is in the early stages of a green building renovation). The certification would also bolster the museum's mission, which is to educate its constituents -- children -- about ways to be good stewards of the environment.

"It's a matter of mission and values," said Louis B. Casagrande, the museum's president and CEO. "And it's turning out to be good economics, too."

The LEED certification would be for the new 23,000-square-foot addition, though the entire museum will have sustainable components.

Casagrande said "several million" out of the $47 million is going toward turning the museum green. The museum said it has raised 90 percent of the funds, but Casagrande cannot say what portion of the 10 percent will go toward the green goal.

The behind-the-scenes green elements include storm reclamation, in which rain would be collected and reused for plumbing and to irrigate the site, and prevent 88 percent run-off into the Fort Point Channel, on which the museum sits.

Another invisible savings is the $1 million state-of-the-art lighting system, which won't make a difference to museum-goers but offers energy savings to the museum.

The hardwood floor in the new building on the first floor is made from recycled wood; the steel piles used in construction consist of 79 percent of recycled material. The new building's roof will be made of sedum, a plant derivative.

The museum expects a return on its investments in 15 years.

Cambridge Seven Associates Inc. is the designer for the project.

LEED certification -- Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System -- requires buildings to meet certain criteria in order to earn credits. Those credits go toward a specific level, such as certified, silver, gold or platinum.

"As you get into the silver, it's a significantly greater effort than meeting the requirements of certification," said John Dalzell, a Boston Redevelopment Authority senior architect. "(The museum is) going above and beyond and looking to be leaders in green buildings."

Naomi R. Kooker can be reached at nkooker@bizjournals.com.

[statler]

Originally Posted by The Globe

Going with the flow
Expansion should make frenzied Children's Museum easier to navigate

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff | April 1, 2007

Back in the 1970s, when Lou Casagrande was starting out as a curator at the Science Museum of Minnesota, visiting a museum aimed at kids sometimes felt like being in a "pinball machine."

"My instructions were to create energy and hands-on in every nook and cranny," said Casagrande, who eventually became senior vice president at the Minnesota museum before taking over as director of the Boston Children's Museum in 1994. "We went probably too far. It was too much energy. People would feel totally overwhelmed and exhausted before they learned a thing."

That was then. Now, as Casagrande readies the Children's Museum for its April 14 reopening, he's talking up the new exhibitions, from the tennis ball launcher to a light-box dance floor. But he's just as excited about a catchphrase he has been using to describe the $47 million expansion project: Visitor flow. The idea is not as glitzy as a cantilever or a glass elevator -- two of the snazzy features in the new Institute of Contemporary Art -- but it's good news to anyone familiar with the way the museum used to feel.

"For us," Casagrande says, "this is the biggest revolution."

Anyone who ventured into the Children 's Museum before is familiar with the old building's shortcomings. Some spots -- the fourth floor KidStage, for example -- were tucked away, almost impossible to find. Then there were the high-traffic areas, made worse by a central staircase that funneled all activity through the center of the building. At times, the place felt like a cross between a rush hour subway car and a sold-out rock club. Double-wide strollers and kids running from exhibit to exhibit only complicated matters.

The new building won't alleviate all these problems. But several key design features should help. Start with the front door, now given a proper place jutting out from the building fa?ade. Before, the entrance was harder to define, one of several doors, some locked, on the building's exterior wall, and leading to a cashier's area partially hidden by the central stairway.

While many a city has gotten into the children's museum business lately, Boston's edition has a long history. Founded in 1913 and housed in Jamaica Plain, the museum opened its current home in Fort Point Channel in 1979, renovating a 19th-century wool warehouse.

Some 440,000 people pour through its doors annually, making it the fourth most attended museum in the region. After two decades in its spot, the museum undertook a renovation plan, closing on Dec. 31 to complete its current expansion.

At the heart of the new Children's Museum is a glass-walled, rectangular expansion that, in a sense, has been placed in front of the taller, existing brick warehouse building. The defining feature of the newer space is its open feel. The ceiling rises three stories in the front atrium, before lowering -- and adding a second floor -- as you move farther into the building.

A series of 10- to 12-foot - wide hallways, reached by a stairway or elevator and stretching the entire length of the expansion, connect the new section with the old. This is how visitors get around. At the end of each of these hallways, there's a spot for visitors to pause and relax. Inside the existing space -- the old warehouse -- there are three floors for visitors.

Visitor flow has driven the new project to the point that the expanded Children's Museum isn't actually all that much bigger than the old space. In total, the museum now takes up 105,000 square feet, just 10,000 square feet more than before. How can an expanded museum be barely expanded?

It was an easy sell to the museum's board, given the institution's needs.

"You can't just use kind of the multiple of going from x square feet to y," said Thomas E. Moloney, chairman of the board. "The most important thing is the museum becomes much more functional."

Consider how the space is used. The fourth floor is now off limits to visitors, used mainly for offices. A bigger and technologically updated KidStage has moved from the tucked away corner to the ground floor. With three floors, not four, open to the public, activity is pushed down, and spread throughout.

You no longer have to walk through several activity areas -- first reached through the now-removed central stairway -- to get to your destination. Wide doorways have been cut into the brick that used to be the outside of the museum. Each gallery is accessible through the bridges.

Not every children's museum has the luxury of worrying about the ease with which its visitors walk through the building. Smaller, newer museums still have to rely on the more-is-better maxim.

"A museum at the stage Boston's at, where it's been around for so many years, it has the square footage to focus more on visitor flow," says Janet Rice Elman, executive director of the Association of Children's Museums. "They also have more of a need to do that because their anticipated attendance numbers are very high."

There is a lot that's new about the expanded museum. The KidPower section -- in the glass-walled, new part of the building -- will feature the tennis ball launcher and hand-pedaled bikes that move an exhibit sign up and down. There's a dedicated space for traveling exhibitions.

A new, three-story climbing structure replaces the old, two-story climb. And even the restaurant changes, from McDonald's to Au Bon Pain.

But what excites Gail Ringel, the museum's vice president of exhibits, is the 3,000-square-foot second floor space known as The Common. Most days, it will feature a maze, musical chairs, and a giant chess game. But in less than an hour, the staff can break down, and move out, all the activities. What's left is a large, central space for groups to gather.

"We get literally thousands of people here for Chinese New Year and St. Patrick's Day," says Ringel. "We hosted significant performances from area artists, dancers, and musicians in there, and it was a serious impediment to flow in the museum. The Common is going to be a very important space. It'll give families a space to sort of rest and recharge. Then when we're having our large festival days, the exhibits can be swept out."

Boston isn't the only children's museum concerned about the way people get around the building. In Philadelphia, the Touch Me Museum is constructing an $88 million building set to open next year. But ask Nancy Kolb, the president and chief executive of the museum, what she's most excited about and her answer is parking and a new entrance.

"It's very important for visitors, and particularly for families, that they not feel crowded," says Kolb. "It's scary enough to come into a city."

The new Touch Me Museum is three miles away from the old building. In an interview, Kolb doesn't even mention the building's architect.

"It's the parking we're moving for," says Kolb.

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com. For more on the arts go to boston.com/ae/ theater_arts/ exhibitionist.

Link

[kz1000ps]

[vanshnookenraggen]

Why is it that THIS is probably the most cutting edge design (minus ICA) in all of the SBW?

[xec]

The newest Orange line T station? No, the Children's Museum addition.


Plenty of that battleship gray color so loved by children. It never fails to bring a smile to their faces.


Nothing better than perforated metal screening to convey a sense of childlike whimsy.


Makes the ICA's industrial architecture look second-rate.

[callahan]

To hell with the kids! I love it!

[awood91]

the museums in this city are outta control! and thats a good thing...
ICA
Children's Museum
MFA
and hopefully the Gardner will be amazing too

[xec]

That attitude is fine for an uninvolved observer, but "To hell with the kids!" doesn't quite seem the best attitude for the museum itself to take.

[vanshnookenraggen]

I have to agree. This would be better suited for an Orange Line station.

[callahan]

Ok, well, we'll just have to wait and see if any kids complain.

I mean, what do you want? It's colorful. It's textural. It's interesting and I would say somewhat whimsical.

[callahan]

Originally Posted by awood91

the museums in this city are outta control! and thats a good thing...
ICA
Children's Museum
MFA
and hopefully the Gardner will be amazing too

What's The Gardner planning on doing?

[awood91]

they are building an expansion designed by our friend Renzo Piano

[callahan]

Originally Posted by awood91

they are building an expansion designed by our friend Renzo Piano

:shock: I hadn't heard any of this! That's fantastic news.

But I just went to their site and didn't see anything about it.

So, I have questions. I don't mean to stray too far off topic, but, where do they have the space to expand?

Also, I think it's interesting because in her will, Isabella Stewart Gardner specified that her house could be turned into a museum but could not be changed in any way. I think she may have been specifically talking about the placement of the art.

[awood91]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/art...useum_to_grow/

http://www.gardnermuseum.org/press_r..._selection.pdf