Fun Museum Blog (aside from our own of course)

We've been working on a marriage of sorts here at Gyroscope, and so far it's... great!

About this time last year, we began working on a merger between the Discovery Science Center and the Fort Collins Museum. Think I've mentioned this before- it's called the Fort Collins Museum & Discovery Science Center (for now). Anyway, they took the big step and moved in together while they complete development, and will be building a new facility.

In the meantime, they have been doing a fabulous job of learning to work together (in less space), prototype, collaborate- all while continuing to enrich the lives of their public.

They've launched a delightful blog called "More to Explore" that is a mix of contemporary science, culture, technology, and experimentation. Check it out:

http://fcmdsc.wordpress.com/

All images courtesy of the FCMDSC.org blog.

Museum + LEED Friday: a better green?

Hi, Scott posting... I'm looking for a better way to describe "green design" specifically for museum exhibits. My problem with "green" is in part due to the way it seems to be flung around with such recklessly abandon. It is a adjective, it is a verb, it will make all your dreams come true. It has become a loose buzz word to describe something that I think could benefit from some specificity. "Sustainable Design" is a great description because it actually means something - to design objects and environments that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs. (this is my attempt to paraphrase a slightly convoluted wikipedia definition) One of the greatest powers of this concept is the way it is applicable to divergent industries and disciplines. Architects, economists and biologists now have a shared set of values and language which is going to be critical in creating the type of change we need. The only shortcoming I have with "Sustainable Design" its that is tends to focus on what is being designed and it's environmental impact and ignores the way it will be experienced. Museum exhibit design is especially powerful because it includes both the visitor's experience and the object or environment. "Environmental Design" may come closer to describing this approach that includes what we design, how it is experienced, and our impact on nature. In my version of "Environmental Design" I am going to let the word environment slide in scale from the immediate all the way out to the global environment. The experience of our immediate environment is a complex overlap of our senses, culture, previous experience, and context. As exhibit designers, we work with these factors to try to create rich experiences. If you slide out in scale, the environment becomes the social space of a museum. Within this environment, the designer can be working with the factors that shape your immediate environment as well as social patterns and group dynamics to create the social experiences that distinguish a trip to the museum from something you can do at home. Finally, a designer is working in and impacting things at the scale of the natural environment. At this scale a designer has a personal impact by designing sustainably as well as a secondary impact when you consider the ways that museums provide experiences that can lead to insights that can lead to changes. This brings content into the conversation and connects back to the immediate environment of the visitor's experience. In this model the visitor's experience and sustainable design are driven by the same objectives: putting people at the center, focusing on their experience and making decisions mutually beneficial to them, the social environment, and the broader natural environment. Now to tell you the truth, "Environmental Design" doesn't work very well to describe all that. While it is helpful that I am able to distort "environment" to fit my meaning, it also means the word lacks the clarity needed. And "Environmental Design" does nothing to conjure the convoluted thought path I just went down. Do you have a good alternative to "green"? Or even a good defense of it? I'd love to hear all about it.

Bubble, Anyone?

The Paola Antonelli quote above was brought to me by Ron Davis, illustrious Principal here at Gyroscope. It's from an article in last Sunday's New York Times by Michael Cannell called "Design Loves a Depression". Mr. Cannell suggested that lean times equal less superfluous design which means better design. It's interesting... and lean. The the article and its design– the Eames chair positioned next to the Campana Brothers chair, and his website gave me the impression that he'd prefer all design to be mid-century minimalist (which I do enjoy). However, I believe the fantastic has a particularly useful role in design. It lifts us out of the every day, and gives us a sense of possibility. Which in these times, can be a very good thing. The problem hasn't been the overabundance of anti-utilitarian chairs, it's been the overabundance of cheap-but-nice-looking stuff. Mr. Cannell suggested that it's "the designer’s job to discourage consumers from regarding that $30 Ikea side table as a throwaway item." I'd regard it as permanent if it lasted longer, and I'd add to that and say it shouldn't be anyone's job to design a throwaway table. I bet the person that bought the Campana Brothers chair is not going to throw it away anytime soon-- or ever. As we continue to formalize our green practice with programs like the LEED certification, we find that it's not a "buy this over that" fix– it's an integrated approach to the entire project that makes things good and green. There are many designers who have been working long and hard to change design in this way. William McDonough + Co., who Mr. Cannell refers to, have been at it since 1981. It's only now that it's fashionable. While some in the mass-consumer design world have been creating a few too many transient objects, the museum world has had little in the way of excess. The impact of the economy on the museum industry has left many feeling that maybe a bubble is better. Especially if you're out of a job or closing down good public programs. Museums have always had to make more with less, with few exceptions. Tough time means that we will now work smarter... and harder.

Gyroscope staff achieves LEED accreditation

Congratulations to Principal Maeryta Medrano and Designer Scott Moulton on our staff! They recently passed their LEED Professional Accreditation exam. This is the culmination of many late nights and long weekends of study. What is it? Read on from the USGBC/GBCI:

"LEED Accredited Professionals (LEED APs) are building industry professionals who have demonstrated a thorough understanding of green building and the LEED® Green Building Rating System™. The LEED AP credential indicates that the professional has the knowledge and skills to facilitate the LEED certification process."

What does this mean for you? If you are working on a museum project and are looking to achieve LEED credits, we'll be able to provide in-depth info and resources on green building as it applies to musuems. We'll continue to post relevant info here on a weekly basis. We'll also continue to focus on current thinking and experiementation in the area of museums, the visitor experience, and planning. A lot to look forward to in 2009.

Happy Birthday, Green Building Council

Ok, Ok, this isn't my finest photoshop effort- I'm under a deadline. Just didn't want to let this pass without a post. The USGBC recently turned 15. I'm beginning to believe that this may not just be a fad. In honor of their accomplishments, the USGBC posted a series of 8 short documentaries on YouTube. What was of particular interest was the letter from S. Rick Fedrizzi, CEO. It talked about the founding of the Council, which struck me to be a lot like getting a new museum off the ground:

"I also wanted to take a moment to share my own story of how I became a green builder. Back in 1991..." [he goes on to talk about first jobs in this area, working for Clinton's White House, learning from the Godfathers of Green: Hawken, Lovins, Browning, and Picard] "...It wasn't very long before I got a cold call from a guy named David Gottfried who wanted to talk about this idea he had for a green building council. When he said it could change the world. I thought he was crazy. But I was already hooked, and so agreed to be USGBC's Founding Chairman. We were little and struggling for the first seven years, and there were many times when we weren't sure we'd make it. But David was right. We can change the world. And here we are proving it each and every day."

Seven years of struggling. Wow- but they are doing well, and it's taking hold- in our industry and others. Thank you, USGBC, and good luck.

Museums Now: Museum + LEED Friday: making sense of certifications [Part 2]

[Hi, Scott posting again] To follow up on the material certification topic I started last week, this week I will be talking about Cradle to Cradle certification. "Cradle to Cradle" is a term coined by William Mcdonough and Michael Braungart to describe a pretty radical way of thinking about the life cycle of a product. Cradle to Cradle is about creating products that are designed for closed loop systems that create value and are healthy and safe. Often as a product moves through it's life cycle it goes through a dramatic degradation process and it's value becomes trapped in useless waste or worse yet it harms other natural systems as it is used. The bigger goal here is to design products that beneficial when they are used. He makes the point that growth in nature or a child is a good thing and so why can't growth related to development also be positive? This thinking turns the minimizing approach of sustainability it's head says that consuming product should play a positive role in our environment and society. The funny thing is that while this will require a radical reworking of the way we think about making and using products, it allows our consumptive urges to continue to run wild. For me, this is both the most promising aspect and the biggest danger. Our consumptive desire has been a tough one to shake (if not impossible) and while the bright future of good products sound great, in the short term we will have to do less. Anyway William McDonough along with Michael Braungart have written a really good book covering this approach and have followed that up with a certification program that evaluated products against their criteria. Mc Donough's website has videos and writings that are worth spending some time on. One interesting development with the LEED certification is that the next version (New Construction V2009) it will contain life cycle assessment as part of it's criteria. I will be interested to see if they start embracing ideas similar to Cradle to Cradle and then I wonder how such a potentially wide reaching idea will impact their other criteria.

Museum + LEED Friday: making sense of certifications [Part 1]

[Hi Scott Moulton posting.] With all the focus on "green materials" I thought it would be useful to talk about a few of the certifications that relate to materials . I'll start this week with certification for wood. Ok first I'd like to make a pitch for solid wood. It is a beautiful, durable, natural material that can be sustainably produced and will biodegrade. After building furniture with it for about 10 years I am still totally enamored with solid wood. (plywood is another matter) So if you are like me and want to use wood and wood that is sustainably forested you will be seeing the logos of FSC and SCS and trying to make sense out of what they mean. The Forest Stewardship Council is an independent, non-governmental, not for profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests. They are the ones who set the most widely accepted standard as to what it means to call something sustainably forested. They have established 10 Principles and 57 criteria that address legal issues, indigenous rights, labor rights, multiple benefits, and environmental impacts surrounding forest management. I've always been impressed by their commitment to a rather broad interpretation of what sustainable forestry means. A lot of the exotic woods come from some troubled regions of the world so along with ecological concerns come some even more serious issues around the impact this trade has on the local people. SCS stands for Scientific Certification Systems and they provide independent third party certification for everything from coffee to flowers. You can see a wood product with both the FSC and SCS logos or only one which has always been a bit confusing to me. The thing to remember is that SCS is primarily a company that verifies environmental claims and performance based certification. So SCS verifies that a forestry practice adheres to the guidelines set out by FSC. Now things get messy because SCS also has their own competing guidelines which they will then verify and you can have the SCS logo show up. In addition, they offer Chain of Custody Certification, Life Cycle Assessment (I'll get into this next week) and single attribute certification for terms like salvaged recycled recovered and so on. All of this points to the interesting fact that while FSC certainly has established itself as the standard, there are differing views on what "certified wood" can or should mean. It is worth investigating the SCS website. I'm still trying to get my head around the extent of everything they are involved in and it raises interesting questions. Is it ok that these "independent third party" folks are also helping Starbucks and Home Depot set up eco guidelines that they will then use as marketing? While it may not be the purist path, I think this work with huge corporations is a really promising development. As ecological concerns become mainstream they will become part of our broad economy the commitment to verification and standards is critical to preserving some meaning behind terms like of "eco, sustainable, or green".

"Best" Exhibit? Why that's an impossible question

When I worked at the Exploratorium, I was often asked the question "what are the top 5 exhibit here?" or at a dinner party I often get asked "what's the best exhibit you've ever seen?". It often gets me to wondering if the director at the MOMA is ever asked "what is the best work of art you have"? Or if the president of Stanford is asked "what's the best class at your school?". I know it stems from a genuine desire to make sense of what often seems (especially in the case of the Exploratorium) an overwhelming amount of info and experiences. However, exhibits are as unique as the person standing before it. They are also developed for specific reasons, and are often not intended for everyone-- but because they live in a public space, they need to be understood by all, if not engaged. When I worked there, I proposed an idea of creating curated podcasts or maps, where visitors could select a filter for what they wanted to experience, such as: - exhibits for teenagers - full-body exhibits - exhibits by artists ...and so on. In addition to to having the museum experts make these determinations, what about letting visitors leave their own maps and trails behind in a museum… much as they do on-line? The nice thing about this approach in a museum vs. in an on-line context, is that you still get to "browse" and be exposed to exhibits that may not be on your "list", since they may be adjacent. How could we make visitor-experienced floor plans? How might we allow visitors to get a sense of what their peers or someone they aspire to be “liked” or “learned from”? Have you seen this working somewhere already? Did you participate?

Museum + LEED Fridays: A Wordle Review

As promised, I've taken all of the LEED and green-related posts thus far and plugged them into Wordle. Probably not a shocking result, but overall "systemic" comes to mind as I look at this. Which, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense. It's less about the silver bullet and all about the holistic, multi-tiered approach.

How to Read a Floor Plan - elevation markers

A while back I started this thread by introducing the basics of the drawing sheet. Now I'm moving the next level deeper into the guts. Above is a floor plan for an exhibit area in a museum. Click on it to see it in greater detail and for descriptions in blue. You'll see that I've highlighted the elevation markers, and described some common acronyms. The elevation markers indicate the drawing sheet that the elevation (meaning vertical view vs. a plan view) lives on. It also tells you where on that sheet you'll find it. Typically, drawings that end in .0 are plans, by the way. Any questions? Feel free to ask. I can address it here or in the next posting on this topic.

A Little Review

Recently, several of you forwarded me the link to Wordle (and Skitch, given my affinity for Comic Life). I thought it would be fun to see what would emerge if I put all my posts into it. Here's the result:

Interesting, eh? I'll do this from time to time and see how... or if it changes. Maybe Friday I'll put all the "green" posts in the hopper.

Museums + LEED Friday: green materials palette

As a follow-on to my post earlier this week about natural environments and children, I thought I would post a palette swatch we have used (and some we are about to use) in our projects. We'll dive into the particulars in future posts. While I haven't included the brightest of brights, they do exist. The nice thing about using these materials in your museum (beyond the obvious) is that it has the effect of inspiring visitors to use the materials themselves. When they see a Vetrazzo countertop, for instance, they say "I can use that in my house"- while at the same time you are walking the walk.

Quick post: natural environments and kids

Recently, Maeryta Medrano sent me a link to an article about kids with ADHD and the impact of environment called "Nature Improves Concentration for Children with ADHD" written by Frances Kuo and Andrea Faber Taylor of the Landscape and Human Health Lab at Urbana-Champaign. This article echoed something we'd been reading, writing, and doing our best to practice for a while- that natural materials and environments have an effect on kids. This is something I'll come back to in future posts. There has been a tradition in children's museums (especially) to create an environment with bright colors and plastic laminates. However, sometimes the use of these materials has an unintended effect on children. If we want to foster inquiry, reflection, and specific types of play, isn't it important that the colors and materials in that environment support those activities?

Museums + LEED Fridays: Green Exhibits?

[Note: Scott Mouton recently posted this note on the ASTC Listserv in response to a discussion about "green" exhibits. I thought it was an excellent discussion of what LEED credits mean in this context. -Maria]

On a basic level LEED is a way to quantifiably measure a building's performance in relation to the criteria set out by the USGBC. Buildings are LEED certified but not products, materials or people. This is not to say LEED has no bearing on exhibits. There are ways that exhibits can contribute towards points and the credit intents are a great way to inform a sustainable strategy for exhibits.

One thing that often gets confused is that materials can contribute towards a credit but
they are not in and of themselves certified. This might seem nit picky but it actually brings up an important aspect of LEED. The system evaluates the entire project based on a set of criteria that is a bit complex and often times contradictory. This complexity within their system is necessary and good.

As soon as you try to say something like "plyboo is a green material" things get complicated. It is a rapidly renewable resource but it also comes from China so it requires a great deal of energy to ship. At almost every turn you can find more questions than answers when trying to find something that is unequivocally "green". Instead of focusing on absolutes, LEED established a clear intent for each credit and then the sum of the credits gives an indication of the overall performance with regard to the environment.

For instance LEED has a credit for using rapidly renewable resources for 2.5% of all the construction materials (plyboo applies here) and it also has a credit for using regional materials for 10% of construction materials.

As the conversation about what make an exhibit "green" evolves, I hope it will broaden beyond material choices and focus overall sustainable strategies. As was raised in an earlier note, there are so many ways to look at this issue. Focusing on the entire life cycle of an exhibit will give you a different set of criteria (and thus end result) than if you were focused on carbon footprint. How do we establish this criteria and then what does it say about us? What are we willing to overlook, what tradeoffs are we willing to make?

So far the discussion has focused on the built object, but there is also the content of an environmentally focused exhibit to think about and how to engage the visitor in these issues. The social space of the museum could also offer unique ways for visitors to experience the aggregated impact of their decisions and sense community that can come from acting collectively.

Oh, and my choices for countertops typically *marketed* as green are:

• sustainably forested wood (if it is an appropriate application)
• Colorlith (recycled pulp in concrete)
• Recycled glass (if you can afford it)

-Scott

Name Games at Children's Museums? Take the Survey!

Hi- Terah Gonzalez, Administrative Assistant and Justine Roberts, Principal at Gyroscope guest posting. We're working on a project that explores a unique trend in the naming of children’s museums.

From analyzing data from the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM), we have found that more than 12% of registered ACM museum members have changed their name in the last 16 years. Interestingly, over half of the same set has changed their name in the last 5 years.

Many of these children’s museums have changed around the order of words in their names– Children’s Museum, Boston to Boston Children’s Museum, e.g. Many others have gone from this type of name to one that includes active verbs or fun adjectives such as Explora (which used to be the Children’s Museum of Albequerque) and Imaginarium of South Texas (which originally opened as the Laredo Children’s Museum). In all, of the 300 museums in the ACM membership, 52 have this style of name and 11 of these organizations have adopted this type of name in the last five years (that's 21%).

This discovery brings up several questions about the names of children’s museums.

• Why are museums changing them in the first place?
• What is it about the last five years that has seen so many name changes?
• Why are children's museums increasingly choosing names that are “off the beaten path” and include verbs and adjectives?
• Are these museum names sign of other deeper changes?
• Or are museums seeing their names as essentially marketing and positioning opportunities?

To answer these questions and more, Gyroscope has launched a survey of Children’s Museum professionals. It focuses on names, audience, and models for visitor interaction, visitor feedback, and visitor research in children’s museums. If you would like your organization to be included in the survey, please click on the link below.

Museums + LEED at ASTC

While I wasn't able to attend the "green" sessions at ASTC, I did take a snap shot of the notes posted on the "Graffiti Wall", and have transposed them below. It was a little hard to decipher some of the handwriting, so let me know if I missed something. "MOSI in Tampa is:

• Designing and building an Energy Center
• Exhibits will be3 on Historical-Current-Future discoveries, uses, relative costs in dollars and environmental costs
• Demonstration Power Plants using alternative renewable sources

1. Solar photovoltaic (13,000 sq. ft. 440kv)
2. Solar thermal (400 sq. ft. 440kv)
3. Methane from landfill demo house
4. Hydrogen Fuel Cell demo
5. Yard waste wood "gassification"

• CO2 + H2O recapture
• Algae/Tilapia production
• Carbon Negative"

Under the suggestions for ASTC, but not cited:

1. Use pitchers/insulated coolers for all milk products, no more cups
2. Only real plates and flatware- no more plastic
3. Institute a "Members Area" and "Educators Area" where they can log in to check for newsletters vs. mailing them out
4. Use Razors Edge for email blasts

Another un-cited (but laudable) quote:

"Developed a green exhibit certification process like the LEED certification for buildilngs and we are applying it to our exhibit design and fabrication."

...and of course Museums Now posts on LEED and Museums on Fridays.

Web 2.0 Sessions at ASTC

By Maria Mortati
I went to a few web-related sessions at ASTC that brought up some interesting questions and case studies.

Bryan Kennedy of the blog Science Buzz talked about the Body World Exhibit blog at Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM). They used the opportunity of the show to look at issues around body donation and asked questions of ethics (and beyond) via the blog. In using this example where they opened it up to be "messy", Bryan was trying to get the audience to consider what their comfort level is with things like controversy when setting up a 2.0 outreach tool.

Kevin Von Appen of RedShiftNow posed the question of "How do you make the virtual audience physical?" He gave a case study of a world wide YouTube event and subsequent real world "888torontomeetup" they held at Ontario Science Center, and how popular it was. While they didn't end up covering a lot of science, it brought in a new audience to their museum, and created a memorable (and heavily archived) connection.

Nina Simon of Museum2.0 gave a really fun example about how to do "tagging" in the real world. It's about a book drop in the Netherlands where folks returned books into one of two slots: average books and great books. She wrote a fantastic blog post about designing from a virtual metaphor to a real world experience.

Other topics covered, such as:

• On a museum website or blog, should you make the "official" voice visible? (yes, usually)
  
• In terms of child safety and museum sites, they suggested that you don't ask "problem questions" of kids during the log in to avoid issues such as COPPA conflicts later.
• On extending the visit: the Franklin Institute (I think) has a face aging interactive on the museum floor that posts the picture on the web site. 75% of visitors log in from home to retrieve it. What a great opportunity for them to ask provocative questions about their thoughts on aging, plastic surgery, you name it. You could enrich AND extend the museum experience.

In the session Making Exhibitions Memorable that I cartooned about yesterday, Renato Valdes Olmos discussed how exhibits have permanence, but little reach outside the museum walls. He reinforced the importance of following those who are blogging or flickring about your exhibits, because again, that extends their reach, and leaves a record. He brought up the artist Banksy, who made a fictitious pet store exhibit and how word spread in a viral fashion via Twitter- which got people to go find it. That approach might not play out so easily for a science museum with a permanent collection-- the Banksy piece is a temporary art exhibit.

The thing I keep hearing is this: provide multiple vehicles for visitors to comment and spread the word about their experiences at your museum. Listen to what they are saying, and respond. The interaction itself will provide great fodder for expanding your relationship with your visitors, and in turn, your impact on their lives.

For me, this boils down to being open, hospitable, and responsive-- and utilizing web 2.0 to do it.

Making (Science) Exhibitions Memorable - ASTC

This will be a longer post in future weeks. Here's a little teaser to whet your memorable exhibition appetite: FYI, the exhibit cited here is "Race: Are We So Different?" from Science Museum of Minnesota.

Museum + LEED Fridays: part 4

Hi, Scott Moulton posting, and this week I'm looking at the commissioning process, and why it's a good thing. This is a requirement for LEED that is new to me and it seems to hold a lot of promise for improving projects. According to the USGBC

"The commissioning process is a quality control process that involves the owner, users, occupants, operations and maintenance staff, design professionals and contractors."

In lay terms, it requires that you write up a set of requirements for the building which the project team pays attention to it through the process and then you assess how well the final building met the goals you set out. The process is led by an experienced Commissioning Agent who is close to the project but will not have a conflict of interest when assessing the final project. For me the most exciting step in this process is the first one. In it, the owner, Commissioning Agent and project team write up a document called the Owner's Requirement Document which spells out the owner's expectations for the building in terms of use and performance. This is intended to happen early in the project and is a really great opportunity for the owner to think in detail about how they will live in the building and what they expect from it. The design team also writes up a document which aligns with the Owner's Requirement Document and is written into the the construction documents that the contractor will build from. This aim of all this writing is to make sure the owner, design team and contractor are all on the same page and then allows a verification and final report to see if the owner was given what they asked for. While the commissioning agent is not given any power beyond providing the information, the process encourages a close collaboration, clear communication of expectations and gives the owner something to stand on should there be problems. I think it is a good example of how the the requirements of LEED will dramatically shape the process of building for the better.

What Makes a Great Master Plan - the basics

Last week, I had a conversation with Chuck Howarth, our Master Planning Guru. I wanted to know what are the basic elements of a great plan. Given that this is a big part of our what we do, I'll go into greater depth in future posts. For now, let's start with the bones:

1. Definition of the audience. Who will come, and how many? Demographics.
2. Definition of the program. Why will they come? Exhibits, education, theaters, outreach, web.
3. Architectural concept and site. Where will they come? How can the building reflect and support the mission and program?
4. The business model. How will the museum support itself? Earned income, support, philanthropy, endowment... What is the relationship between the business model and the service model (item #2 above)?
5. The capital budget. What's it all going to cost to put the plan in place?

The master plan generally addresses all aspects of the project EXCEPT fund-raising feasibility, which is usually handled separately. That's partly because it is a very different discipline, and partly because of the inherent conflict of interest in having the same team evaluate both the likely cost and the likely resources. When I pressed about "greatness", here's what he had to say:

"Now as to whether it is a GREAT master plan—guess that would depend on doing all of the above well, but also doing them all together. Each feeds back on the other. The program affects the staff plan and operating budget; the capital budget influences the architecture and exhibits; the audience affects and is affected by the program and the business model. And so on. The most common mistake is to treat each topic as more or less discrete, for example by trying to estimate attendance before studying what kind of museum and what type of program. So the plan needs to be holistic and address everything at once. And do it with substance, style, careful research, and creativity."

Thanks, Chuck!