Natural history Museum
Master Thesis Project
Project was awarded President of Gdynia Diploma of the Year Award and was nominated for the Dean’s Diploma of the Year Award.
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The vision for the project was to create a sustainable, democratic public building that is dedicated to learning, research and innovation. The project involves combining a Natural History Museum with a comprehensive Research Institute to create a sort of a science hub.
The broad educational program of the museum and public and private research facilities interact creating a place that not only draws young people to natural sciences but also offers science based jobs that are scarce in Poland. Heavy emphasis was put on social and environmental sustainability that is reflected in focus on public areas and use of mass timber structure to name the few.
public spaces
The design framework for the project involved incorporating a broad program of publicly accessible spaces that are inclusive for people of different backgrounds, income and lifestyles. These spaces can be found not only in outside landscaping design but also within.
functional program
The general functional division segregates the museum and research institute into their respective buildings. In the spirit of shared economy meeting and conference facilities were grouped together in the ground floor to be used by both buildings as needed and allowing them to be rented by outsiders.
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Publicly accessible supplementary functions such as library, restaurant and cafés, urban farming and vantage terraces are interwoven into the functional scheme facilitating more spontaneous interactions between the users.
flexibility
A number of solutions was applied to ensure the flexibility of the design, the most general being that it can be divided into two separate buildings. The museum building is fitted with all necessary functions including laboratory space and room for growth.
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The research building on the other hand can be easily subdivided into smaller, stand-alone laboratories or offices, the space can also be converted to typical offices.
exhibition
The exhibition is arranged circuitously with a central hall, and communication distributed by ramps that wrap around the hall and allow for both sequenced viewing of the full exhibition and easy cut through to specific parts of it - which will be especially useful for school field trip classes. To really help understand the issues that the exhibition touches upon, the museum strategy incorporates the collection magazines, workshops, preparatory rooms and laboratories into the viewing experience, as one of the goals of the project is to encourage children and youth to pursue careers in science. For that purpose those spaces are gathered in functional blocks with the rooms separated by glass walls that ensure the visual connection.
