Exploratorium Mobile Exhibits at McLaren Park
by Steve Gennrich • November 8, 2014
Projects
Piers 15/17
At its new home on Piers 15 and 17, the Exploratorium features two acres of outdoors exhibits that explore the urban edge between the city and San Francisco Bay, supporting and expanding its role as a community museum dedicated to awareness. The collection of 40 exhibits is both playful and profound. A large number of them give voice to the landscape, making visible such forces as sun, wind, tidal currents, and rust, and calling attention to aspects of our built world. These exhibits expand the focus on noticing and observation we first explored at Fort Mason. Other elements in the outdoor spaces are aimed more directly at bringing people face to face with each other, enticing visitors to play together and share their delight in the stimulating environment.
Most of the Pier 15 site is free and open to the public 24 hours a day. A broad pathway completely encircles our main building, and a large plaza faces onto the Embarcadero, where thousands of tourists and locals pass by daily. These public spaces are constantly changing, populated by an evolving mix of temporary installations, programs, and public events. SPS works in-house with Exploratorium Explainers, program and exhibit staff, and with outside artists, vendors, and performers to enliven the plaza. These collaborations are an ongoing exercise in place-making that hones our sense of what constitutes a vital public destination. Building on this understanding, we hope to provide a flexible infrastructure that’s rich enough in possibility that our spaces become a vibrant center of civic activity and a venue for public discourse on a wide range of important matters.
Elements
Bike Rope Squirter
These upside down, bike-powered machines are built to throw ropes twenty feet into the air. Acting a bit like water and a bit like rope, the loops dance along the ground as visitors play an Exploratorium-style game of jump rope.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Anamorphic Bench
A cylindrical mirror turns a curved bench into something that looks quite different, taking a Renaissance-era illusion into the third dimension. The installation encourages playful interactions among users, bringing people together both visually and socially as they explore the unexpected effects.
Where: Plaza
Color of Water
Water reflects the blue of the sky, but if you look down into it, its color is based mostly on the green of marine algae—phytoplankton—and the brown of suspended silt. This array of color chips lets viewers determine what’s influencing the color of water today.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Gyroid
The gyroid, a mathematical shape that has two distinct sides, provided inspiration for this well-used climbing structure. Young visitors avidly explore its topology.
(Onsite 2013 – 2015)
Remote Rains
With its bright orange umbrella and chance for users to drench their friends, this exhibit has a playful aspect. But its rains are based on the measurements of meteorologists and accurately depict the drop size and frequency that characterize actual rainstorms.
Tidal Flow
Floating orange arrows turn a series of leftover pilings into a visual representation of water movement into and out of the Bay. As tides rise and fall, the arrows travel up and down the pilings, swiveling to point the direction of the water flow.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Rust Wedge
Rust is a major issue in waterfront buildings, as water enters cracks in masonry structures and rusts the underlying steel reinforcement. This exhibit shows the expansive force of rusting steel. A piece of iron placed in the cleft of a block of concrete is beginning to rust—it will expand over time and eventually fracture the block.
Where: Koret Foundation Bay Walk
Wind Arrows
Wind indicators from a sailboat, mounted on a flagpole at one-foot intervals, illustrate how the laminar flow of wind changes with height. Along San Francisco’s shoreline, a difference of only 20 feet in altitude may mean a 90-degree difference in the wind’s direction.
Echo Tube
Make a sound into the echo tube and listen for it to reflect back from the far end. You’ll hear a half-second delay, and strange distortions created by the journey.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Rotating Shadow House
A rotating structure made of laths casts shadows that slowly change, calling to mind the shifting light of a day or a season and producing unexpected variations. Benches allow for relaxation and quiet watching.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Golden Gate Bridge
In San Francisco, bridges and buildings are made to move.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Bay Windows
Five clear, rotating disks provide beautiful windows onto the motion of sediments in the Bay. Spin them to compare the behavior of gravel, sand, and fine silt—how the currents carry them and how they settle out of the swirling waters.
Where: Koret Foundation Bay Walk
Rickshaw Obscura
Step into this mobile camera obscura and never see the light the same way again. A small lens in the ceiling captures the scene around the visitor and projects a ghostly dreamlike movie on the table below.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Disappearing Rings
Lower these rings into the Bay and see just how far you can see into the water. One of the San Francisco Bay’s defining features, sediment flows from the delta change with the seasons. This exhibit is based on a scientific observational instrument called a “secchi disk,” which scientists use to determine water clarity.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
