Moshe Safdie and Associates | Project Details

Project Name

EXPLORATION PLACE

Project Location

WICHITA, KANSAS

Client

Exploration Place, Inc.

Inception Date

1996-01-01

Completion Date

2000-01-01

Total Area

100,000 sq. ft. (9,290 sq. m.)

Project Cost

$27,000,000

Status

1996-2000

Design Team

Moshe Safdie and Associates with Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey and Associates, Associate Architects

Brief

Located at the confluence of the Arkansas River and it tributary, the Little Arkansas, the center organizes the interpenetrating elements of the continuous river's edge, public park, and museum. Exploration Place provides scientific and humanistic education. Visitors enter through a pavilion containing the Cyberdome, Simulation Theatre, and curatorial wing, and cross a channel to the exhibition pavilion, surrounded by water and dedicated to the human experience on earth. The building's geometries are created by the intersection of the undulating walls and surfaces of two giant toroids. The 'island' exhibition building is generated by a toroid whose center is high in the sky, forming a series of concave roofs facing skyward, like a giant receptor dish or observatory. The 'land' building toroid has its center deep underground, creating vault-like roofs descending into the earth. Radiating glue laminate beams, acting in tension in the island building and in compression in the land building, have spans as long as 56 feet. The gallery interiors ascend from 16 feet at the central spine to upwards of 70 feet.