Outdoor Exploratorium: Home


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The Outdoor Exploratorium is an NSF-funded project to create a collection of outdoor exhibits dispersed at several partner sites throughout San Francisco. The project will consist of 20 to 25 installations and exhibits that explore the natural phenomena of the immediate environment. Water, wind, sound, and light, in all their complex behaviors, will be foci of investigation. Rather than simply selecting exhibits that are too big or too messy to put indoors, we want to focus the Outdoor Exploratorium on interventions that can help visitors notice and examine the phenomenological behaviors all around them. Areas of investigation also include the built environment and human behavior in urban environments.

Goals for Visitors

Help visitors develop skills in noticing phenomena in the natural world;
Help visitors explore complex systems and interactions in an outdoor environment;
Help visitors make connections between experiences with indoor exhibits and the outdoor environment;
Help visitors come to a deeper understanding of the natural world by applying scientific concepts and principles to the outdoor environment.

Goals for the Organization

Develop new approaches to exhibitry that foster and mentor observation;
Present a new environment where visitors can interact with natural phenomena in more direct ways;
Contribute to research on informal learning by assessing visitors' ability to notice subtle phenomena and change over time outdoors, and identifying the links visitors make from exhibits to the natural world;
Learn how to plan for and maintain exhibits at locations not adjacent to the museum. This planning and design process will be shared with the museum field through publications and conference presentations.

You can learn more about the Outdoor Exploratorium and be part of discussions about outdoor exhibits by joining our discussion forum. To subscribe, just send an email to outdoor-on@exploratorium.edu.


	The Outdoor Exploratorium project is funded by the National Science Foundation.