If you get to San Francisco this summer, do you very best to break away from the typical sightseeing attractions known to most of the hordes of visitors and head to the Golden Gate Park. More specifically, the California Academy of Sciences within the park.
This recently reopened science museum and research facility is also an architectural marvel as well as a facility leading the way in public spaces with its platinum LEED rating – the first such rating for a museum. The building looks as if it were constructed underground, and then came up for air, raising two and one half acres of living earth along with it. This of course seems apropos for a facility consisting of a aquarium, planetarium, and natural history museum.
The nearly five hundred million dollar development was penned by renowned modernist architect Renzo Piano with the intention of blending into its surroundings and having little impact on them as well. The place heats and cools itself with almost no outside demand for energy. And the attempts to bring the outside in are endlessly apparent at every turn, not least of which are the twenty million plant and animal species to be found inside. And while there are places in the museum where you could be forgiven for forgetting that you’re indoors, if you do find yourself with the need to get away from the popular San Francisco tours’ stop, merely step outside and take in the thousand acre surrounding Golden Gate Park and its endless list of pleasures.
