California Academy of Science

San Francisco, a city with a strong collective vocation for the environment, meant, according to Piano, finding a symbiotic language with this shared vision of the present. Starting from a truth as obvious as that our planet is fragile, through the suggestive spaces of the Museum of Natural History, the large green roof that breathes and the successful coexistence of outreach and research activities, the new headquarters of the Academy of Sciences of California has wanted, through architecture, to transmit its passion for the knowledge of nature.

The California Academy of Sciences was founded in San Francisco in 1853. It is one of the most prestigious institutions in the US and one of the few natural science institutes where public experience and scientific inquiry occur in the same place. Combining exhibition space, education, conservation, and research under one roof, the Academy also comprises a natural history museum, aquarium, and planetarium.

The varied shapes of these different elements are expressed in the roofline of the building, which follows the shape of its components. The entire 37,000m2 complex is like a part of the park that has been cut and raised 10m above the ground. This “living roof” is covered with 1,700,000 selected native plants planted in specially designed biodegradable coconut fiber containers. The roof is flat around its perimeter and, like a natural landscape, becomes increasingly undulating as it moves away from the edge to form a series of domes of various sizes rising from the roof plane. The two main domes cover the planetarium exhibits and the rainforest. The domes are dotted with a pattern of skylights automated to open and close for ventilation.

The humidity of the soil, combined with the phenomenon of thermal inertia, significantly cools the interior of the museum, thus avoiding the need for air conditioning in the public areas on the ground floor and the research offices along the façade. The photovoltaic cells are contained between the two glass panels that form the transparent canopy around the perimeter of the green roof; they provide more than 5% of the electricity required by the museum.

The choice of materials, recycling, the positioning of spaces with respect to natural lighting, natural ventilation, the use of water, the recovery of rainwater and energy production: all these design issues became integral part of the project itself and helped the museum achieve LEED Platinum Certification.