Universeum in Gothenburg, Sweden

Universeum, which opened in 2001, is located in a dramatic structure that received an architectural award for the best building design in Sweden since 1950. Conveniently located near a major public transit station, it is next door to a large amusement park and expects to host 500,000 visitors this year. This photo shows the watercourse along a sidewalk leading to the building in the background.










Universeum, like many European museums, is seeing record attendance in 2007, which it attributes in large part to the prolonged rainy weather.

Inside, the center has two major and very different parts. One part is devoted to biology and includes a stream-to-ocean environment and a large rain forest environment. On the other side of a huge glass wall are several floors of physical science exhibits.

To begin their journey through the biology section, visitors first take an inclined lift up 30 vertical meters to the top of a winding path that starts with the plants and aquatic fauna associated with a mountain stream environment in Sweden.

Long, waist-height, open-topped aquaria extend along the winding path and gradually transition to lower-elevations and a marine environment that transitions to a below-the-surface setting that includes a circular tunnel with sharks and other large fish. There is also a touch tank, shown here, where visitors can hold marine invertebrates when staff are present.

Galleries in this part of the building include terrestrial animals such as a popular exhibit called “Deadly Beauties,” with displays of colorful, but poisonous, snakes and other animals. These displays are beautifully designed and well maintained.

Visitors can then go through a large, multi-level rain forest environment that includes extensive displays of plants plus a few animals. Warm rain drips continuously in air with 100% relative humidity, and the effect is dramatic. These two areas are used extensively for school group visits, with generally involve a guided tour with extensive questions and answers between the staff and visiting students.

The transition to the physical sciences on the other side of the building is abrupt. Exhibits here are grouped in various thematic areas and include “Dig It!” (making music with computers in a series of stations in glass rooms, as shown in the photo).

“Brash, Bang, Boom” is an exhibition on automotive safety (sponsored by Volvo, of course, which is based in Gothenburg). In this exhibit, visitors learn that their speed in a 30 km/hr crash is equivalent to jumping from a height of 3.5 meters. They can experience this by climbing the stairs and jumping to the mat below. At 70 km/hr, it's like jumping from an 8-story building. A scale nearby weighs visitors in Kg and also shows the equivalent "mass" at 30, 50, and 70 km. This exhibition extends the mission of the science center in an interecting direction by combining the science with a public service. Every Thursday, police spend 2 hours at the exhibition talking with visitors about safety, and a workshop for teens uses an alcohol-related scenario to encourage critical thinking about the consequences of drinking and driving.

“Puls” is a popular series of physical challenges related to healthy hearts, although most visitors seem simply to enjoy the physical challenges more than the science. A weather center (under construction), a space flight and astronomy area, and several other single exhibits (included whisper dishes that reflect off a wall-mounted disk because there is no path within the exhibit area that is long enough align the two dishes axially.)

The building, as part of its design, incorporates a number of interesting sustainability-related features. One of them is a dual drainage system that separates toilet wastes into two streams and treats the liquid portion inside the building.

The center has recently received major funding to develop an exhibition on climate change. It is still early in the process, and the major thematic areas and individual exhibits are in the concept development stage. However, the core message will likely revolve around helping visitors to think critically about their personal actions and to make more-informed decisions about their individual and collective impacts on the global environment.

Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway

The Natural History Museum is actually a collection of three museums in a beautiful park setting in the City of Oslo. The main museum buildings house traditional collections in botany, geology, and zoology.

The museums are non-interactive and are organized along traditional lines of classification. In the Geology museum, for example, the lower floor provides a large number of rock specimens in the areas of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary geology.

The upstairs floor is devoted to physical and chemical processes in geology, mineralogy, and paleontology, including a full-sized cast of the T-rex Stan (who is now believed to have been a female).

The zoology museum is a series of dioramas and specimens in cases, with a small area for changing exhibitions. The museum had just closed an exhibition they had developed on homosexuality in animals. This exhibition brought in a large number of visitors and will soon be going on tour internationally. Many of the diaramas, including this heron, are beautifully done.

A large part of the park-like campus is devoted to several botanical gardens, which have been well-designed, well-maintained, and are a joy to spend time in.

Collections ranged from a nicely laid out rose garden to an aromatic smell garden to a rock garden that was created from the bequest of a man who had lived near the park and had grown up walking through it as a child.

Of particular interest was the signage, which was relatively sparse but full of interesting stories and tidbits. At the ginkgo tree grove, for example, in addition to the usual information about being one of the oldest types of trees still in existence, visitors can learn that ginkgo leaves were chewed by monks because the leaves contain a substance that reduced their need to urinate during long religious ceremonies.

While the museum has recently organized several public forums on global warming, it has not considered developing any exhibitions on climate change, in large part because the geologists associated with the museum think in geologic time scales, have studied the variability of the global climate throughout geologic time, and are unconvinced that the current global warming has an anthropogenic origin.

National Museum of Science & Technology in Oslo, Norway

Founded in 1914 and designated as the National Museum of Science and Technology in 1995, this museum, is dedicated primarily to the history of technology. It recently absorbed a small, independent, (and failing) science center in 2002, which it now operates it as a department. Another unit is a medical museum with permanent two exhibitions: one on the history of diseases from 1850 on and another on what it is like to be in a hospital, including a section for children and for the end of life.



The building is new. It also rents space to the Telecom Museum (which currently has a popular exhibition on the history and culture of ring tones.)

The exhibits in the science center area are robust. They are primarily Exploratorium favorites, sturdily built and all working, such as a Bernoulli Blower with target hoops.

Another major theme, of course, is oil. Exhibits in this area address the geology of oil and the technology of platforms, including what it’s like to work and live on a large deep-sea oil platform.

The main exhibit galleries are devoted primarily to energy and transportation. In the energy area, the museum has worked hard to bridge the two worlds of the science museum and the science center by showing some impressive and important examples of hardware from the Norwegian hydropower industry. Among these historical objects are interactive exhibits that demonstrate principles of electromagnetism and the generation of electricity. While most of these exhibits are close-ended, the museum is planning a major renovation that will change many of these.

The largest area of the museum is devoted to transportation. This section has traditional displays of cars, planes, motorcycles, bikes, etc.

A new and interesting program presents mini-exhibitions on current hot topics in science. These exhibitions may be on the order of 30 m2 (300 SF) and are designed for quick use in the lobby.

The current exhibit was called “Cyberstork” and raises questions about the ethics and technology associated with choosing a baby via the Internet.

The museum is currently developing a new exhibition on global warming that will open in early 2008, along with extensive programming for schools. This exhibition will include sections on the science of climate change as well as its impact on people throughout the world.

Teknikens Hus in Lulea, Sweden

Teknikens Hus, voted the “Best Small Science Center” at the last Science Center World Congress, is a vibrant center that pays a lot of attention to its local industries and their technology.













Located on the campus of the University of Technology in Lulea, the center was conceived in 1979 by a woman who was responsible for recruiting new students. Her vision was to create a center that would show children about local industries and inspire them, particularly girls, to pursue degrees in engineering and other technical subjects at the local university.







The center has an exhibit design philosophy that is unusual, if not unique. The center’s goals are similar to most science centers and museums: to inspire interest and curiosity for science and technology. Its current director (who previously served as head of exhibits and has been with the center since before its construction) is an historian and a former theater set designer. Building on this background, the exhibits have an immersive quality that is rare, especially in a relatively small center (2,500 m2 or 25,000 SF of public space).




Once the topic for an exhibit has been selected, the three design priorities, in order, are: 1) using the real McCoy, such as a real airplane propeller that visitors can spin with a motor and adjust the pitch of the blades and feel the difference in the wind speed. Other examples include a real hydraulic log lifter that visitors can use to move around real logs (the cockpit of the machine is inside the building but the machine sticks out through the wall, and the mechanisms and logs are all outside.)

The second priority, when full size is not possible, is a working scale model, such as this papermaking machine that reproduces the main functions of a 100-m-long machine in a 10-m-long model. It uses 1.5 tonnes of pulp annually, and visitors can make a real piece of paper with it, from pulp to pressing and drying. As a nice touch at the end, Teknikens Hus provides a seal of the museum with which visitors can imprint their piece of paper. This photo shows the first of three sections of the machine, which altogether is about 10 m long.

Another example of this type of exhibit is a working, model-scale hydroelectric power plant.

The third option is a non-working model, such as a sawmill, which would be too dangerous, dusty, and noisy to do in the museum but which represents an important industry that Teknikens Hus wants to represent. All of these exhibits are sponsored by local industry, which believes that the center provides a useful opportunity for increased student awareness of technical careers. Here is the entrance to a blast furnace - another important local industry being steel, of which 250 different varieties are produced locally.

Teknikens Hus draws primarily from Lulea (70K residents) and a regional audience of 250K. Its 100K annual attendance is remarkable, and every school child in the region has had multiple experiences there by the time they have graduated from high school.




The center realizes that it must continually change its exhibits and programs to spark repeat visits and hosts 7-8 traveling exhibits annually using 2 spaces. Currently, its main temporary exhibition is called “Cold Poles, Hot Stuff”, which shows visitors what it is like to do research at the poles. This picture shows the view from the bow of an icebreaker, and small viewers on posts at the corners show video clips of wildlife that you might actually see in polar regions. As with all exhibits at Teknikens Hus, the design of the deck here uses the same materials, colors, and design as the real thing.

A small cold room lets visitors try to assemble metal parts with bulky gloves on. Puzzles let visitors put the right animals at the right pole (polar bears fit only at the North Pole, while penguins fit only at the South Pole). 2 large circular floor maps help visitors understand that the polar regions start at latitudes above 60 degrees (not just above the polar circles, and some pieces of real research hardware give visitors a sense of some of the types of research going on.

A web-based, real-time weather readout displays the current temperature (a chilling -39 deg C in one case), wind speed, and relative humidity at 2 research stations, one near each pole.

Other features of Teknikens Hus include science theater shows daily (a penguin meets a researcher, and the audience learns about the ways penguins are adapted to survive in Antarctica); a 20-seat planetarium featuring the northern lights as a backdrop, a café that serves as a mensa/cafeteria for the local university at lunchtime, and gift shop.

Teknikens Hus has a staff of 25, of which 1/3 are in the exhibits dept. This group, like several other museums, does a brisk business in exhibit manufacture and traveling exhibition rentals.

The center has several programs related to sustainability and creativity. In one program, school students work in groups to create a vision of the future, develop a project (model, PowerPoint presentation, theatrical production, exhibit) and the top entry from each of 6 science centers go annually to southern Sweden to present their vision to the other 5. Another program encourages students to invent a solution to a real problem, and entries are judged and winning entries displayed. School programs have been designed around current exhibitions, and one uses these ice core models to talk about the physics, chemistry, and biology of polar regions.

Sustainability is a theme that has appeared twice in Teknikens Hus’s traveling exhibitions. A previous exhibition, called “Grasping Climate,” is currently on display at the Nacka Natural School near Stockholm and will be described in a future post. Overall, the goals of the center are to make the public aware that climate change is happening and that everyone can do something about it. A key philosophical outlook is that even if a single individual’s action has a small effect, when adopted by everyone, the impact can be large and important.

Heureka in Vantaa, Finland

Heureka, located just north of Helsinki, packs a lot of activity into a relatively small indoor space and uses its extensive outdoor area very effectively. The center is a short, enjoyable walk from the train/bus station through a wooded area and over an artistically designed cable-stayed footbridge over a river running through the city.











Inside, Heureka has features of museums much larger. It knows that it must change exhibits frequently to maintain repeat visitation and has a good mix of permanent exhibitions, new single exhibits, and touring shows, for which it has two galleries. Some of these temporary shows are designed internally and others rented from other museums; a new exhibition developed by Heureka on shipping was just being set up while an exhibition on Mexican anthropology was in the other gallery.





The indoor exhibits were a combination of mostly original designs plus modifications of favorites found in other museums and a few purchases and trades. The use and integration of technology were some of the best I have seen. For example, a new exhibition on smart transportation systems includes an Internet-based station with 3 screens where visitors can see all of the planes in the air over North America (some 4,000 planes by the afternoon), all of the ships in the Helsinki area, and all of the city buses in Helsinki. By moving a crosshair over any given vehicle with a trackball, visitors can see, for example, a plane’s destination, flight path, number, ground speed, and height. All of these data are actually available on the Internet, but the museum, in partnership with a local university, has developed a museum-friendly interface that works very well and lets visitors experience several aspects of current transportation technology seen normally only in movies.

As another example, a nearby station in this exhibition uses 4 ceiling-mounted cameras to track the movements of visitors in the exhibition. Again, using custom software, a screen toggles between showing the movement of individual visitors and which areas receive the most amount of visitor time – something many museums have spent significant resources to do by hand. This system does it in real time and demonstrates computer vision and recognition, another powerful element of intelligent traffic systems. The floor is a huge, printed satellite image of the region, and at selected points, monitors in the floor display real-time images of intersections, and LED displays show average traffic speed.

Other indoor highlights include several geodesic-domed amphitheater areas for science shows (including one in which rats play basketball), a domed theater (which is being converted to a digital planetarium from an older 870 film projection system), a large auditorium, gift shop, and the Einstein Café, a full-service lunch facility.












The outdoor science park is large at 8,000 m2 (2 acres) and has a number of original exhibits, such as a climb-in-able Klein Bottle, a thermometer that works by measuring the expansion of long copper pipes mounted on the side of the museum, and a wind machine that lets visitors experience the force of the wind blowing at 25 m/sec (shown here).













Various water exhibits range from a human treadmill-powered Archimedian Screw to a build-it-yourself arch bridge over a small streamlet.



Other outdoor exhibits include extensive plantings, a garden of flowers organized by numbers of petals from 1 to 12, the largest rock park I have ever seen, and even a “clock garden,” in which the flowers bloom according to the time of the day.




Heureka, like many other European museums I have visited in the past several months, has a strong interest in the environment and believes that it has an important role to play in helping its visitors become more aware of global warming and to become better decision makers without dictating which specific behaviors are “best.” A series of new permanent exhibits on recycling help visitors learn about the implications of choices they make in selecting and disposing of common products, for example.





Under development is a new school program in the form of a game that is linked to their transportation exhibition and will allow teams of students to travel (virtually) between cities to perform various tasks using wireless PDAs. Throughout the game, they will have to optimize conflicts such as travel time and CO2 emissions and will receive real-time feedback on their decisions.

In this and many of their other activities and exhibits, Heureka demonstrates a strong commitment to group or family learning. Exhibits for the most part have been designed and displayed to promote group interactions, and it was clear from watching visitors that they were engaged and learning from each other as well as from the exhibits. In this exhibit, teams of visitors team up to form a virtual fireman's blanket and catch falling items in a politically corrected version of the mid-80s computer game "Bouncing Babies."

Funding-wise, Heureka obtains slightly more than 50% of its US $9 million budget from the City of Vantaa and Ministry of Education. This is in keeping with many European museums, which typically rely on earned income sources for 1/3 to ½ of their annual operating budget.

One area where Heureka differs significantly from other European science centers and museums is their use of volunteers. Whereas volunteering at a museum is rare in Europe, Heureka has about 80 active volunteers, modeling their program after U.S. museums and finding that volunteering fits in with the culture in Finland.

La Cite de la Sciences et l’Industrie in Paris, France

La Cite is a very large science center, which opened in 1986 on the site of a former slaughterhouse in northeastern Paris.











The project was part of a redevelopment effort to revitalize this part of the city and has by all indications been successful, as the overall venue welcomes 3 million visitors each year, including 1.5 million to the science center. Shown here is the large IMAX dome theater.

The scale of La Cite is grand. It mounts some 10-12 temporary exhibitions each year. 1,000 staff work with an annual budget of about $140 million. 25% of the building is still unused and available for other uses or expansion. Some ¾ of the budget is provided by the French government each year, and the rest is earned through admissions, food, gift shop, and IMAX income.










The majority of the exhibits are relatively non-interactive and target adults with a broad variety of topics such as energy, cars, astronautics, etc. There are relatively few pure science exhibits.















A current science area, which is managed by a staff of 20, changes to a new theme each quarter. The current topic is Africa, and a wide range of information panels, interactive computer stations, artwork, and other objects invites visitors to learn more about development in this region of the world. At one end of the area is a large round black granite table with computer stations where visitors can dig into several areas of current science and vote their opinions.









A major area for children is currently being renovated. Once completed, it will be 5,000 m2 (50,000 sq ft) and will include two areas; one for 2-5 year olds and one for 5-11 year olds (La Cite finds that after age 11, relatively few children come to the science center or use hands-on exhibits). The exhibits in both areas have been created with developmental psychology in mind and are interesting from a pedagogical viewpoint.
In the younger area, the exhibits are very colorful, simple, and attractive for young children, with a hollowed out tree, a kangaroo with a pouch that small children can crawl into, and some excellent water play.

My favorite part of this area, however, was a construction zone in which children can build structures with weighted foam blocks, using a large crane, trains, and various building elements. Optional hardhats and construction jackets are provided, and most children enjoy dressing the part. A wonderful side benefit of this construction area is that children who have never met each other must learn to work as a team in order to accomplish anything.

In the area designed for older children, exhibits run a broad gamut of topics from a mini-butterfly house to biochemistry and robotics. Exhibits are designed as props for adults to facilitate learning of the children with them. Signage is not encyclopedic, but rather supportive of adults. It works well, and it is easy to see why La Cite is a favorite destination for children and families.

A number of the exhibits in this area were based on the theme of communication. A small, immersive area included messages and examples of food from other cultures. There were opportunities to try writing messages in other languages.

In a fun variation on the pneumatic message-tube exhibit, the air pressure needed to send the message to the other end station is generated by visitors sitting on the round red seat near the exhibit.

La Cite has made a major commitment, as an institution, to sustainability and helping the public understand issues related to climate change. A major exhibition about 4 years ago called “Climax” provided an immersive experience intended to jolt visitors into thinking about the potential impacts of global warming. The exhibition opened one month after the heat wave that killed 35,000 Europeans and had Parisian morgues overflowing.

Members of the museum staff indicate that public understanding of global warming in France has reached the point where this earlier exhibition would no longer be considered current science; i.e., people in France have moved beyond needing to be convinced of global warming and its human causes and now are more interested in what to do about it.

A more recent exhibition, which just closed last month, was called “A New Era” and treated a number of issues related to future climate change scenarios, as well as what we can do to leave a smaller carbon footprint while maintaining a quality of life similar to that which we now enjoy.

As an institution, La Cite has committed itself to engaging the public in conversations about sustainability and climate change. The center realizes that it can’t do this without “walking the talk” itself, and it is now looking at many aspects of its operations, from lighting, insulation, and building energy usage, to the messages it shares with the public through its exhibitions and programs. It now has a fulltime sustainability coordinator, whose goal is to work with all departments to align their operations with sustainable practices such as recycling, energy conservation, etc. La Cite also plans to include sustainability as a constant element in all of its future exhibitions, much as it now includes universal design.

Palais de la decouverte in Paris, France

The Palais de la Decouverte (Palace of Discovery) is celebrating its 70th birthday this year and has quite a track record: a recent survey showed that 50% of the major scientists in France were inspired through one or more visits to the Palais during their youth. While currently enshrouded in scaffolding and undergoing a major renovation on the outside, there is still plenty to see inside.

The building is spectacular inside. Originally built for the 1900 World Exposition in Paris, the center was the later brainchild of a Nobel Laureate who believed that the public deserved more contact with scientific phenomena. To that end, the exhibits in the Palais are somewhat in the background, and often non-interactive.

The focus is decidedly on real science and contact with real scientists, so each subject area has one or more small amphitheaters. Paid explainers, who account for 30% of the staff, present more than 60 live shows daily. Shows are less theatrical than in some science centers, but visitors often linger afterwards for quite a while with questions. Since the presenters tend to be scientists (and not actors trained to present the shows), these conversations can become extensive. Here is a doctoral student presenting the show "Liquid Air."

There are 30 individual amphitheaters within the museum, and each one is different (seats, format, etc.) Funding for the Palais’s $20 million budget comes 75% from the government, with the remaining 25% from earned income sources such as admissions, gift shop, etc. and a few corporate sponsorships.

While at the Palais, we were invited backstage to speak with a firm from Boulder, CO, that was just finishing up the installation of a huge shake table as part of a new exhibition on volcanoes and earthquakes. We were able to take the first ride on this multi-level, 3-axis shaking machine, which was programmed to generate a Magnitude 7 event for us. Since our family had been close to ground zero for the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California (Mag 7.2), this ride felt all too familiar.

The Palais has made a strong effort at making the public more aware of global warming as an issue. Most recently, they have mounted a 6-month temporary exhibition on polar science and global warming while celebrating the 1937 scientific expedition of Paul-Emile Victor to Greenland 70 years ago.

The exhibition compares fauna at the two poles (polar bears live only in the arctic region, penguins only in the Antarctic) and has a number of exhibits demonstrating principles of ocean currents, icebergs, glaciers, albedo, and the food chain in cold marine climates. A section on Inuit culture includes many artifacts from the everyday life of people of Greenland.

Here is a view through a portion of the exhibition with various small rooms and exhibits on the science of ice and climate at the poles. This was an ambitious project that included natural history collections (re polar bears, etc.), cultural artifacts, and interactive exhibits on the physics of the poles. These last exhibits were themselves an experiment, and the developers expressed the difficulty of creating robust hands-on exhibits on the subject of ice and climate change.

A Danish artist, who had recently lived and taught in a small village of 300 (including 72 K-12 school students) created a poignant mini-exhibition of artwork done by her students. Our visit happened to coincide with the opening reception for the art teacher. 3 Inuit children were brought to Paris for a week, and one can hardly imagine their thoughts, having never before left their isolated village.

I was particularly taken by one piece of artwork, which depicted an elder talking with a youth about the old ways. Here you see the old man thinking about the fjords, hunting, polar bears and seals, while the boy is thinking about cans of Coke and fairy tales.

After a cycle of conversations on various aspects of Inuit life, the youth gains a new appreciation for some of the old values. However, given the speed of warming at the poles, it is possible that many of the activities associated with the old way of life may simply not be possible in the near future because of changes in climate.