News of the Arroyo
Title: | Perfect use of Space |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2004-12-05 |
Summary: | December 5, 2004 - Star News editor Larry Wilson tours the new Kidspace Museum facility in Brookside Park and offers his verdict. |
Author: | Larry Wilson |
Publication: | Pasadena Star News |
Content: | REMEMBER the fracas not to mention the legal action when Kidspace announced its plans several years back to move the children\'s museum to several acres of Brookside Park? The honorable opponents were by no means anti-kid Scrooges. Most of them were seriously concerned parks proponents who understand that sometimes you have to draw a line in the playground sand: No taking of open-space park land, no matter what! And there were honorable preservationists as well, concerned about the beautifully designed buildings of the 1938 Fannie Morrison Horticulture Center on the site at the northeast corner of Brookside, which had fallen into disuse and disrepair for decades. Honorables, I bring very good news. Last Thursday, two weeks before its opening, I toured the new Kidspace site with board member Chris Morphy and Executive Director Steve Baumann. My verdict: Small miracles are happening. My prediction: This is going to be one of the best-loved buildings and gardens, and museum in a city already rich in same, and in all California, for many decades to come. My reservations: None. Neo-Modernist architect Michael Maltzan\'s design has integrated all the old Morrison buildings into the new design, each long board of the old floral conservatory having been replaced and refinished. Nancy Goslee Powers, designer of the gorgeous new gardens at the Norton Simon, has taken more than two acres of what had grown into impassable bramble probably the least usable park space in Pasadena and turned them into verdant paths lined with salvia and willows and restored arroyo riparian habitat, with rock-climbing walls and a stream and natural amphitheater. Fountain-filled courtyards include some kid-happy splashers and fog-makers. So, it looks great, and the campus works. The design and execution are of the highest quality out there. A Wolfgang Puck-run cafe will make it even better. But the soul of the museum is in its interior places, and they are of a scope and grandeur that give education a good name. Seismic-study rooms dug out with realistic fault lines deep into the ground; hundreds of live insects, reptiles and amphibians on display; a night room kids explore with head lamps on their helmets; the Bug Food Channel on TV; a \"nature exchange\' room where kids can bring in their own samples of dirt and plant life to explore with staff and do lasting research updated on personal Web pages over multiple visits. And the heart of the action two 40-foot interior climbing towers created from tons of steel and 400-pound clear round glass panels are that perfect kid museum thing: Crazy-scary enough to get young hearts racing, but built like a (reinforced) brick house so that mom doesn\'t freak. It\'s all free on opening days Thursday through Saturday Dec. 16, 17 and 18. An $8 admission applies after that, with various family memberships and group rates available. And Kidspace is already working with local schools to arrange free field trips. Welcome back, Kid. It\'s going to be fun. -- Larry Wilson is editor of the Pasadena Star-News. His column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Write him at larry.wilson@sgvn.com . |
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