California Academy of Sciences

From 2000 through 2003, John Farnum Studio was the Creative Director for the natural history museum in Golden Gate park, San Francisco. Farnum Studio wrote the design brief and recruited the designers for all the public areas of the museum, including the exhibits, restaurant and retail store. Charged with creating a museum for the 21st Century, Farnum Studio created the exhibition content framework and co-master planned the museum with the project architect, Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Italy. With three major Icon exhibits: aquarium, planetarium and rainforest globe, we produced an interconnected story-telling matrix that spanned themes such as “Life is Water”, “Islands and Evolution”, “California Stories”, “Human Evolution”, and “Life in Extreme Environments”. This story matrix demanded creative use of scientific specimens, proprietary media production and interactive content. As an example, the Planetarium was designed as a high-tech visualization theater for presenting programming that ranged from the cosmos to the sub-microscopic level.