Renzo Piano 新作誕生 - 舊金山加州科學博物館（California Academy of Sciences）
耗資4億5000萬元重建的舊金山加州科學博物館（California Academy of Sciences）2008 年9月27日早上由舊金山市長紐森、科學館館長 Gregory Farrington、建築師 Renzo Piano 等主持了開幕禮，儀式由印第安傳統祝福開始，結束前由十多名小童放生500隻美洲橙褐色大蝴蝶（Monarch Butterflies），之後免費讓市民進內參觀。
加州科學館創建於1853年，位於金門公園內與Herzog & de Meuron 設計之 de Young Museum(狄揚博物館)遙遙相對，因1989年大地震危及建築物結構，2005年底關閉，部分展覽暫時搬到市中心的Howard街。
紐森市長在當天開幕儀式上詞表示，加州科學館也凸顯舊金山的多元文化，附近有狄揚博物館、日本茶園。
重建的加州科學館是美國環保建築委員會認可的白金級環保建築物（Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ，LEED），符合舊金山發展環保城市的理念。
科學館的重建經費來自部分舊金山1995年C提案和2000年的B提案發行公債，此外又得到聯邦參議員范士丹和聯邦眾議院議長波洛西的推動，從加州政府和聯邦政府共獲得1億5200萬元撥款，其餘款項向私人或大機構等籌募。
科學博物館館長Gregory Farrington指出，該館共有多項主題展覽，有地球形成、萬物生命之源、海洋生態、2萬5000加侖的水族館、熱帶雨林、非洲自然博物館、天文館等。
全新的科學博物館是建築師 Renzo Piano 的精心設計，結合了六間建築公司的設計，分五組進行了3年的研究工作，最特別是2.5畝的屋頂花園，種植了近200種加州植物，動用了260萬磅的土。
從空中鳥瞰，加州科學博物館(California Academy of Sciences)的圓屋頂就像巨大的綠色冰淇淋凸出地面。這些起伏的凸起構成了2.5英畝的屋頂，使整個建築和金門公園周圍的綠色空間構成一個整體。除此之外，圓屋頂還節能，因為它具有隔熱和通風的功能，確保下面40萬平方英尺的博物館清新舒適。
此設計案耗資4.84億美元，有可能成為符合美國綠色建築委員會的LEED (能源與環境設計先導)白金級別的最大建築。此標準是綠色建築的最高榮譽，全球至今只有70棟建築達到了這一標準。皮亞諾的設計佳品有標志性的法國巴黎的蓬皮杜國家藝術和文化中心。
LEED 的宗旨是要興建世界上最環保與最佳的建築。其方法是，為開發商提供明確的環保建築標準和評分制度。其中能源使用佔17分，水利用佔5分，建築內部環境質量 佔15分。得分39分的建築可獲金獎，意味著該建築比常規建築環保50％，而得分52分可獲白金獎，比常規建築環保70％。
Renzo Piano 利用植被來當加州科學博物館的屋頂(Living Roof)其實就是一種節能的最佳方法，因為這作法能在冬天隔絕冷空氣的侵入，而在夏天保持順暢的通風環境，降低對空調的依賴以節省電力。
而且在這個屋頂下面，也就是在館內，參觀民眾將能見證到自由飛翔的鳥、擁有超過4千隻在活體珊瑚裡活動的魚，以及透過屋頂的玻璃還能直接觀看外文星象的自然歴史博物館，可說是裡裡外外都與自然、環保相結合。
其實Renzo Piano就是希望自然科學博物館不要只是給人看死板板的化石、虛擬的天文圖表，或是玩玩一些簡易的物理小遊戲等，而是可以用具體實踐的行動，讓全球共同的價值：「環保」，讓人更親近。
NYTimes
A Building That Blooms and Grows, Balancing Nature and Civilization
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: September 23, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO — Not all architects embrace the idea of evolution. Some, fixated on the 20th-century notion of the avant-garde, view their work as a divine revelation, as if history began with them. Others pine for the Middle Ages.
But if you want reaffirmation that human history is an upward spiral rather than a descent into darkness, head to the new California Academy of Sciences, in Golden Gate Park, which opens on Saturday. Designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano on the site of the academy’s demolished home, the building has a steel frame that rests amid the verdant flora like a delicate piece of fine embroidery. Capped by a stupendous floating green roof of undulating mounds of plants, it embodies the academy’s philosophy that humanity is only one part of an endlessly complex universal system.
This building’s greatness as architecture, however, is rooted in a cultural history that stretches back through Modernism to Classical Greece. It is a comforting reminder of the civilizing function of great art in a barbaric age.
The academy building is the last in a series of ambitious projects to be conceived in and around the park’s Music Concourse since the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Herzog & de Meuron’s mesmerizing de Young Museum, enclosed in perforated copper, opened three years ago. Scaffolding is to come down at the concourse’s neo-Classical band shell this week after a loving restoration.
Glimpsed through the concourse’s grove of sycamores, the science academy gives the impression of weightlessness. A row of steel columns soaring 36 feet high along the facade lends the building a classical air; the sense of lightness is accentuated by a wafer-thin canopy above that creates the illusion that the roof is only millimeters thick. It’s as if a section of the park carpeted in native wildflowers and beach strawberries had been lifted off the ground and suspended in midair.
The idea is to create a balance between public and private, inside and out, the Cartesian order of the mind and the unruly world of nature.
A glass lobby allows you to gaze straight through the building to the park on the other side. Other views open into exhibition spaces with their own microclimates. The entire building serves as a sort of specimen case, a framework for pondering the natural world while straining to disturb it as little as possible.
Mr. Piano’s building is also a blazingly uncynical embrace of the Enlightenment values of truth and reason. Its Classical symmetry — the axial geometry, the columns framing a central entry — taps into a lineage that runs back to Mies van der Rohe’s 1968 Neue Nationalgalerie and Schinkel’s 1828 Altes Museum in Berlin and even further, to the Parthenon.
Just as Mies’s glass-and-steel museum reworked Classical precedents, 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, supported by a gossamerlike web of cables, swells upward as if the entire room were breathing. Views open up to the landscape on all four sides, momentarily situating you both within the building and in the bigger world outside. A narrow row of clerestory windows lines the top of the lobby. One of the building’s many environmental features, these windows let warm air escape and create a gentle breeze that reinforces the connection to the natural setting.
From here you can proceed into the exhibition halls, delving deeper into the universe’s secrets. Two enormous 90-foot-tall spheres — one housing a planetarium, the other a rain forest — beckon from either side of the lobby. They are the most solid forms in the building, yet seem to hover in the space. The base of the planetarium sphere floats in a pool; a broad ramp snakes around the rain-forest sphere. Enveloped in gnarled branches, the ramp seems to have been swallowed up by the jungle landscape over millenniums.
Once you reach this point, the genius of the green roof’s design becomes apparent. The mounds of earth visible on the exterior turn out to be hollow: their forms, punctured by round skylights, bulge upward to make room for the giant spheres underneath. It’s as if a lush protective rug has been gently draped over the entire building.
Additional exhibition spaces just beyond the spheres were designed with movable partitions that give them a temporary feel. Large windows open onto more park views.
The museum has also preserved its African Hall, with its gorgeous vaulted ceiling and dioramas of somnolent lions and grazing antelopes, integrating it into the new design. Built in the 1930s, this neo-Classical hall is a specimen of sorts. Its massive stone structure reflects colonial attitudes about the civilized world as a barrier against barbarism. It was intended as a symbol of Western superiority and a triumph over nature.
By contrast, Mr. Piano’s vision avoids arrogance. The ethereality of the academy’s structure suggests a form of reparations for the great harm humans have done to the natural world. It is best to tread lightly in moving forward, he seems to say. This is not a way of avoiding hard truths; he means to shake us out of our indolence.
加州科學館創建於1853年，位於金門公園內與Herzog & de Meuron 設計之 de Young Museum(狄揚博物館)遙遙相對，因1989年大地震危及建築物結構，2005年底關閉，部分展覽暫時搬到市中心的Howard街。
紐森市長在當天開幕儀式上詞表示，加州科學館也凸顯舊金山的多元文化，附近有狄揚博物館、日本茶園。
重建的加州科學館是美國環保建築委員會認可的白金級環保建築物（Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ，LEED），符合舊金山發展環保城市的理念。
科學館的重建經費來自部分舊金山1995年C提案和2000年的B提案發行公債，此外又得到聯邦參議員范士丹和聯邦眾議院議長波洛西的推動，從加州政府和聯邦政府共獲得1億5200萬元撥款，其餘款項向私人或大機構等籌募。
科學博物館館長Gregory Farrington指出，該館共有多項主題展覽，有地球形成、萬物生命之源、海洋生態、2萬5000加侖的水族館、熱帶雨林、非洲自然博物館、天文館等。
全新的科學博物館是建築師 Renzo Piano 的精心設計，結合了六間建築公司的設計，分五組進行了3年的研究工作，最特別是2.5畝的屋頂花園，種植了近200種加州植物，動用了260萬磅的土。
從空中鳥瞰，加州科學博物館(California Academy of Sciences)的圓屋頂就像巨大的綠色冰淇淋凸出地面。這些起伏的凸起構成了2.5英畝的屋頂，使整個建築和金門公園周圍的綠色空間構成一個整體。除此之外，圓屋頂還節能，因為它具有隔熱和通風的功能，確保下面40萬平方英尺的博物館清新舒適。
此設計案耗資4.84億美元，有可能成為符合美國綠色建築委員會的LEED (能源與環境設計先導)白金級別的最大建築。此標準是綠色建築的最高榮譽，全球至今只有70棟建築達到了這一標準。皮亞諾的設計佳品有標志性的法國巴黎的蓬皮杜國家藝術和文化中心。
LEED 的宗旨是要興建世界上最環保與最佳的建築。其方法是，為開發商提供明確的環保建築標準和評分制度。其中能源使用佔17分，水利用佔5分，建築內部環境質量 佔15分。得分39分的建築可獲金獎，意味著該建築比常規建築環保50％，而得分52分可獲白金獎，比常規建築環保70％。
Renzo Piano 利用植被來當加州科學博物館的屋頂(Living Roof)其實就是一種節能的最佳方法，因為這作法能在冬天隔絕冷空氣的侵入，而在夏天保持順暢的通風環境，降低對空調的依賴以節省電力。
而且在這個屋頂下面，也就是在館內，參觀民眾將能見證到自由飛翔的鳥、擁有超過4千隻在活體珊瑚裡活動的魚，以及透過屋頂的玻璃還能直接觀看外文星象的自然歴史博物館，可說是裡裡外外都與自然、環保相結合。
其實Renzo Piano就是希望自然科學博物館不要只是給人看死板板的化石、虛擬的天文圖表，或是玩玩一些簡易的物理小遊戲等，而是可以用具體實踐的行動，讓全球共同的價值：「環保」，讓人更親近。
NYTimes
A Building That Blooms and Grows, Balancing Nature and Civilization
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: September 23, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO — Not all architects embrace the idea of evolution. Some, fixated on the 20th-century notion of the avant-garde, view their work as a divine revelation, as if history began with them. Others pine for the Middle Ages.
But if you want reaffirmation that human history is an upward spiral rather than a descent into darkness, head to the new California Academy of Sciences, in Golden Gate Park, which opens on Saturday. Designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano on the site of the academy’s demolished home, the building has a steel frame that rests amid the verdant flora like a delicate piece of fine embroidery. Capped by a stupendous floating green roof of undulating mounds of plants, it embodies the academy’s philosophy that humanity is only one part of an endlessly complex universal system.
This building’s greatness as architecture, however, is rooted in a cultural history that stretches back through Modernism to Classical Greece. It is a comforting reminder of the civilizing function of great art in a barbaric age.
The academy building is the last in a series of ambitious projects to be conceived in and around the park’s Music Concourse since the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Herzog & de Meuron’s mesmerizing de Young Museum, enclosed in perforated copper, opened three years ago. Scaffolding is to come down at the concourse’s neo-Classical band shell this week after a loving restoration.
Glimpsed through the concourse’s grove of sycamores, the science academy gives the impression of weightlessness. A row of steel columns soaring 36 feet high along the facade lends the building a classical air; the sense of lightness is accentuated by a wafer-thin canopy above that creates the illusion that the roof is only millimeters thick. It’s as if a section of the park carpeted in native wildflowers and beach strawberries had been lifted off the ground and suspended in midair.
The idea is to create a balance between public and private, inside and out, the Cartesian order of the mind and the unruly world of nature.
A glass lobby allows you to gaze straight through the building to the park on the other side. Other views open into exhibition spaces with their own microclimates. The entire building serves as a sort of specimen case, a framework for pondering the natural world while straining to disturb it as little as possible.
Mr. Piano’s building is also a blazingly uncynical embrace of the Enlightenment values of truth and reason. Its Classical symmetry — the axial geometry, the columns framing a central entry — taps into a lineage that runs back to Mies van der Rohe’s 1968 Neue Nationalgalerie and Schinkel’s 1828 Altes Museum in Berlin and even further, to the Parthenon.
Just as Mies’s glass-and-steel museum reworked Classical precedents, 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, supported by a gossamerlike web of cables, swells upward as if the entire room were breathing. Views open up to the landscape on all four sides, momentarily situating you both within the building and in the bigger world outside. A narrow row of clerestory windows lines the top of the lobby. One of the building’s many environmental features, these windows let warm air escape and create a gentle breeze that reinforces the connection to the natural setting.
From here you can proceed into the exhibition halls, delving deeper into the universe’s secrets. Two enormous 90-foot-tall spheres — one housing a planetarium, the other a rain forest — beckon from either side of the lobby. They are the most solid forms in the building, yet seem to hover in the space. The base of the planetarium sphere floats in a pool; a broad ramp snakes around the rain-forest sphere. Enveloped in gnarled branches, the ramp seems to have been swallowed up by the jungle landscape over millenniums.
Once you reach this point, the genius of the green roof’s design becomes apparent. The mounds of earth visible on the exterior turn out to be hollow: their forms, punctured by round skylights, bulge upward to make room for the giant spheres underneath. It’s as if a lush protective rug has been gently draped over the entire building.
Additional exhibition spaces just beyond the spheres were designed with movable partitions that give them a temporary feel. Large windows open onto more park views.
The museum has also preserved its African Hall, with its gorgeous vaulted ceiling and dioramas of somnolent lions and grazing antelopes, integrating it into the new design. Built in the 1930s, this neo-Classical hall is a specimen of sorts. Its massive stone structure reflects colonial attitudes about the civilized world as a barrier against barbarism. It was intended as a symbol of Western superiority and a triumph over nature.
By contrast, Mr. Piano’s vision avoids arrogance. The ethereality of the academy’s structure suggests a form of reparations for the great harm humans have done to the natural world. It is best to tread lightly in moving forward, he seems to say. This is not a way of avoiding hard truths; he means to shake us out of our indolence.
