Project description for the design-build exhibit fabrication RFP for the Ralph Perkins II Wildlife Center & Woods Garden at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH) has launched a $150 Million comprehensive renovation and expansion construction project that will transform the appearance of the campus and the manner in which it engages visitors. Laboratories that house the Museum's collections and research functions will be located adjacent to galleries, allowing visitors of all ages and backgrounds – especially children and students – to experience real science at work. Along with hundreds of science and health education programs that the museum now offers, this new design will enable the Museum to deliver the promise to bring science to life, inspiring more young people to connect to and consider pursuing science as a career.
Designed by Thinc Design, the Ralph Perkins II Wildlife Center & Woods Garden ("Wildlife Center") will be an intimate, interactive Ohio landscape shared with native plants and live animals, and a primer for some of the natural organisms and ecosystems you encounter in your backyard and beyond. The overall organization of the Wildlife Center is based on a combination of two themes – the rooted ecological communities of Ohio and the more mobile animals that have migrated to Cleveland.
While traditional zoo exhibits display animals in wild contexts, the Wildlife Center emphasizes that these animals have chosen to live in our urban ecology. Many of the residents are orphaned or injured; the care and affection lavished on them by the staff is made visible by design. That they could be equally at home in a number of ecological communities is reinforced by overhead trail ways that allow them to explore beyond their enclosures into other distinct communities.
In an analogy to the trail ways for animals, a sweeping elevated trail affords people the opportunity to glide through tree canopies, the domain of raptors, porcupines, songbirds, and raccoons. There, immersed in the animals’ own habitats, the movement of a fox in the distance or a bobcat sprinting by in an adjacent mesh trail way may catch your eye. Likewise, a nearby raccoon may be people-watching, pondering your progress through the canopy. These unexpected vistas - from above, below, and literally a bird’s eye view – reinforce the idea that we share this environment with these Ohio natives.
A wetlands area, home to river otters and other watery denizens, is approached by a walkway that subtly cuts into the ground, till the visitor is partially submerged between walls of water and life. The shift in elevation opens new windows into a common habitat.
For the visitor, didactic graphic signage about each animal includes important zoological data, but will also tell the stories about how each animal came to live at the Museum.
