Ground broke this February on the new Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science in Miami, designed by the New York office of Grimshaw Architects, with local firm Rodriguez and Quiroga Architects Chartered serving as executive architect. Located in the downtown Museum Park District, the 250,000-square-foot museum is centered around a living core of terrestrial and aquatic exhibits, including a 600,000-gallon tank that can be viewed from a rooftop observation deck and from interior galleries, where the tank appears to emerge from the ceiling. “You don’t have a sense of boundary and perimeter to the tank; you feel immersed in it,” says Grimshaw partner-in-charge Vincent Chang, AIA. Other facilities include a planetarium, exhibition and education wings, an education center, and a café. “One almost has to try to assemble five or six unique projects in one coherent building,” Chang says. “Understanding the gradient by which you placed them together was very important.” The building is designed to take advantage of Miami’s temperate climate, allowing daylight and prevailing breezes to permeate portions of the interior (some areas do require careful climate control). The building has a green roof, a rainwater-reclamation system, and solar panels to generate on-site power. The museum will open in 2015.
