Quick answer
The California Academy of Sciences is a natural history museum and aquarium in Golden Gate Park, founded in 1853 and rebuilt by Renzo Piano after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged its old buildings. The new museum opened in September 2008, holds 46 million specimens, and carries a 2.5-acre living roof planted with 1.7 million native plants.
Full transcript
Burned, Cracked, Rebuilt
Start with what this building's predecessors went through. The California Academy of Natural Sciences was founded in 1853, three years after California joined the United States. Its Market Street home was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire; staff saved about a cartload of materials, and botanist Alice Eastwood carried out the plant specimens. The academy rebuilt and moved to Golden Gate Park in 1916. In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake cracked the park buildings badly enough that the academy chose to start over: construction of this building began in September 2005, and the academy reopened on September 27, 2008, to a line that stretched more than a mile down Kennedy Drive. Thousands were turned away that day.
A Roof Made of Plants
Renzo Piano's building is low and long, and its most important surface is on top. The 2.5-acre living roof carries 1.7 million California native plants in coconut-fiber containers, shaped into domes over the exhibits and inspired by the seven hills of San Francisco. It absorbs rain and keeps the building cool enough that most public spaces need no air conditioning. Around the roof's edge, 60,000 photovoltaic cells generate more than five percent of the museum's electricity, and the complex was the first museum to earn LEED Platinum. Three of the old structures — African Hall, North American Hall, and the Steinhart Aquarium — were kept inside the new design, so part of the 1923 aquarium still stands under the 2008 roof.
Start Inside, Finish Outside
The exhibits stack by depth: the Steinhart Aquarium's coral reef at ground level, the rainforest dome rising above it, the planetarium beside that. Behind the scenes the academy holds 46 million specimens, one of the largest research collections on the planet. Start with the rainforest dome and its free-flying butterflies, then cross the piazza to the de Young Museum's free tower and look down at the living roof from above. Stand on the tower deck and compare the two roofs you have seen: the plant roof below you has existed since 2008, and part of the building under it dates to 1923.