A Building That Blooms and Grows, Balancing Nature and Civilization

San Francisco one of the city with great architect.
The new California Academy of Science at Golden Gate Park which opens on this Saturday that is September 27, 2008 is designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. The site of the academy's demolished home, the building has a steel frame that rests on the verdant flora like a delicate piece f fine embroidery. It is capped by floating green roof of moving wave like a round plants, which denotes that humanity is the only one part of an endlessly complex universal system.

The academy building is the in the series of the project to be completed. There is Music Concourse around the park since 1989 when devastating earthquake broke out. Herzog & de Meuron’s mesmerizing de Young Museum opened three years ago. Just the glance of academy give an impression of weightlessness. A row of steel columns 36 feet high along the face of the building lends the building to the classical air, it sense the lightness which is gained by the water-thin clothing above that creates the illusion of that the roof is just the millimeters thick. it is as if a section of the park is carpeted with native flowers and beach strawberries which are lifted off the ground and suspended in midair.
Their main idea was to create balance between public and private, inside and outside, the order of the mind and the unruly world of nature.

There's a glass lobby which allow you to see across the park and also to the building. Other view is towards the exhibition.
Mr. Piano’s building also Enlightens values of truth and reason. It has classical symmetry. Which has axial geometry, the columns framing a central entry.Mr. Piano’s design invokes Mies’s model, though with a sensitivity that makes the muscularity of the 1968 museum look old-fashioned.

The roof of the academy’s lobby swells upward as if the entire room were breathing. Views open up to the landscape on all four sides, denotes you both with the building and the bigger world outside. A narrow row of windows line top of the lobby allows the warm air to escape and creates a gentle breeze that creates the connection to the natural setting.

From here one can proceed to the exhibition hall where one can know deeper secretes of universe. There are tow 90 foot tall spheres out of which one is housing a planetarium and other is about a rain forest. These are the most solid form in the building. The base of the planetarium sphere floats in a pool; a broad ramp snakes around the rain-forest sphere. From this point the the green roof's design becomes apparent.

Addition to this the exhibition spreads just beyond the spheres were designed with movable partitions that give them a temporary feel. Large windows open onto more park views. This museum has also preserved its African Hall. which has lions and antelopes. Built in the 1930s, this neo-Classical hall is a specimen of sorts.

At last Mr.Piano discuss about the academy's structure that suggests a form a great harm that human has done to the natural world.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/arts/design/24acad.html?ref=design