Museum of the Earth
Ithaca, N.Y.
Weiss/Manfredi Architects

Weiss/Manfredi evoked a geology shaped by water to help the Museum of the Earth tell the 4.6-billion-year history of the planet

© Paul Warchol

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By James S. Russell, AIA

One of the largest fossil collections on earth inspired the Museum of the Earth, but it lacks what packs ’em in: dinosaurs. The museum does have a passion to teach, however, embodied in the energy of its youthful director, Warren Allmon. The fossil record, he says—as he pulls open drawer after drawer, each revealing a panorama of ancient life forms frozen in stone—can be used to teach both the history of earth and the history of life on earth.

The Paleontological Research Institute (PRI), which built and runs the museum, possesses one of the largest such collections on earth. While its presence in tiny Ithaca, New York, is largely accidental, it grew, in part, because central New York State is such a geologically rich region. Ithaca sits at the base of Cayuga Lake, one of 10 aptly named Finger Lakes, which were carved out as massive ice sheets receded 20,000 years ago. Since then, streams have gouged the ridges surrounding the lakes into spectacular waterfall-veiled gorges that reveal millions of years of geological history and expose such a wealth of fossils that even schoolchildren can readily find them.

As the institute, affiliated with nearby Cornell University, contemplated expanding its small exhibition program into a full-fledged museum, Allmon found himself confounded by the task of telling 4.6 billion years of Earth’s history in a few thousand square feet. “Finding the message was the hardest thing,” he says.

The architect PRI had hired for the project, Weiss/Manfredi, of New York City, looked at bubble diagrams prepared by exhibition experts with quiet dismay. “They assumed a flat, introverted site with a black box sitting on a parking lot,” said Michael Manfredi, AIA. He and his partner, Marion Weiss, saw much richer potential in the site, the institute’s 6 acres, high on a hill sloping downward toward the lake. “This was a landscape shaped by water, radically in terms of glaciation,” explained Weiss on a recent visit. “Giving this idea form, helping to make it visible, seemed a way to make the design intrinsically powerful.” From the bermed-up parking terraces to the “erupting” sunken roof forms, the architectural strategy puts visitors in touch with the physical reality of geology, preparing them for the vast abstraction of geological history.

It was not easy reconciling this ambitious architectural idea with Allmon’s equally ambitious aspirations for the exhibitions. Oh, and $5.8 million for reinforced poured-in-place concrete and steel structures plus sitework was a stretch, as was the $3 million ultimately spent for exhibitions. While the fossil collection was the basis, Allmon did not feel constrained by it. The whale skeleton that greets visitors at the entrance (above) happened through just the kind of difficult conversation that frequently took place during the design process. “Many of Marion’s sentences began with ‘you can’t afford … ’ ” said Allmon. “But she told us we needed an artifact that made a big splash at the entrance—something to draw people in.” That something turned out to be a rare right whale, which beached itself and died in New Jersey. At a day’s notice, staff rushed to claim the whale, removing its flesh to preserve the skeleton. All in a director’s day’s work, Allmon shrugs. “What’s a whale doing in a paleontology museum?” he asks rhetorically. “This whale was tracked for a long time, and scientists knew a great deal about it. And it gives us a chance to talk about the environment and conservation.”

Allmon also asked the architects to incorporate artwork by Barbara Page, a local artist. Inspired by the institute’s collection, she painted a record of geological time. Weiss and Manfredi incorporated it into the circulation strategy, devising a ramp that wraps Page’s Rocks of Ages Sands of Time. Each panel depicts one million years of geological time. The architects mounted each row of panels according to distinct geological eras.

Within the 7,000-square-foot envelope of the exhibition hall, Jeff Kennedy Associates’ exhibition design traces geological history through a combination of artifact displays (including 665 from PRI’s collection), hands-on “Discovery Stations,” and small A/V-heavy enclosed theaters. Clerestories bring in light, but hanging metal blades keep sunlight from reducing exhibition readability. Visitors can end their tour outside, where the terrace offers more display space for weather-tolerant specimens.

“We’ve worked to make the museum accessible at many levels,” adds Allmon, “for the Ph.D.s in dreadlocks and the rural families who live 5 miles away but think of Ithaca as the big city.” And it has worked, not just in expanding attendance toward a goal of 50,000 to 60,0000 annually: The temporary-exhibitions area below the whale skeleton has become unexpectedly popular for weddings and parties (which also help augment the museum’s finances). “It’s the architecture that attracts them,” says Allmon. “It’s where everyone wants to be.”

See the January 2004 issue of Architectural Record for full article.

Location:
Ithaca, N.Y.

Gross square footage:
20,000 sq.ft.

Total construction cost:
$7 Million

Owner:
Dr. Warren D. Allmon, Director
Paleontological Research Institution

Architect:
Weiss/Manfredi Architects
130 West 29th Street, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10001
Phone: 212.760.9002
FAX: 212.760.9003