Home Style TELUS Spark - The New Science Centre
TELUS Spark - The New Science Centre
Telus Spark - The New Science Centre is located a short drive - or ride on the citys rail transit system - from Calgarys downtown business, shopping and hotel district, where about 25 per cent of the citys commuting population works. Conveniently, the new centre, which includes a full - dome 3D digital video theatre, is minutes walk from a more terrestrially focused tourism/education/entertainment mainstay of many large urban centres: the city zoo. In fact, spillover parking for the new centre, should its own dedicated parking lot for 450 vehicles ever prove insufficient, is available at the zoos adjacent parking lot. The new science centre, which is on an 18 - acre parcel of land, has been developed by the Calgary Science Centre and Creative Kids Museum Society and replaces an existing facility in more cramped quarters downtown. Explaining the push to build a new science centre, Brad Struble, the director of design for the new science centre project, says, "The present science centre ran out of space. Its about 60,000 square feet. A city the size of Calgary would usually have a comparable facility about twice that size. The old site was too small." At 153,000 square feet, the new centre is nearly three times that, and its HVAC system can be calibrated to precise humidity and temperature settings. This ensures that various types of exhibits, with their varying requirements, can be safely stored and exhibited at the new facility. "It is purpose - built to accommodate ongoing changes to exhibits. Its designed for change. This type of science centre is becoming more common for mid - size cities. A new one in Des Moines, Iowa, has a similar approach," says Struble. He notes that the new facility can accommodate groups of up to 1,000 for lectures and presentations. The HVAC has two cooling and heating systems. One is water - based overhead radiant heating and cooling. "The heating/cooling panels intersperse standard acoustic panel. The radiant panels comprise about one third of the ceiling area," says Tim McGinn, a principal and high - performance building design professional at architectural firm Dialog. The new, larger science centre is also designed with a projected growth in annual visits in mind. Recent years have seen about 300,000 visitors annually, but the new centre should be able to handle about double that. The centres digital dome theatre, which will be completed in the spring of 2012, about six months after the October 2011 grand opening, is a 235 - seat digital dome theatre with a curved 21 - metre screen. A two - storey atrium is at the core of the two - storey building and runs just over half of its length. Adjacent to the atrium and on one side of the lobby is the feature gallery that will be a venue for travelling exhibits. On the other side of the main lobby is the Creative Kids Museum. Designed for children up to eight years old, it, like almost everywhere else, has its own sponsor, according to an interactive floor plan provided on the centres website. Even the classrooms and labs on the second floor have sponsors. Two other galleries - Energy & Innovation and Earth & Sky - and a 164 - seat presentation theatre are on the other side of the atrium. On the second floor are more exhibition galleries, a learning centre and a cafe. "The centre is designed in a way to reach a broader audience than its membership, and is designed to be iconic within the broader community. This is done with the integration of the landscape and a layered scrim of the building. From the outside, the building is not visually static. Its designed to change in appearance between, say, 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. The appearance of the building is constantly evolving and that expresses processes of transformation and discovery," says Alan Collyer, a principal at Dialog. Describing the buildings exterior design as "a natural palette for programmable LED light," and noting its visibility from the citys biggest, busiest and fastest freeway, Collyer says that the esthetics of it are "a way of engaging people with science and technology."
Referring to the approach to the new centres interior design, Lois Wellwood, a partner at Kasian Architecture Interior Design and Planning Ltd., says, "Our role was to transform the spaces to address what the experience in the respective rooms is about. The science centre has very diverse programs and rooms." The interior design team wanted to make sure that, as people strolled around the centre looking at exhibits, they were always well - oriented and in tune with where they were. "Some concepts of interior space relate to connectivity of spaces and how they work together," says Wellwood. This was achieved with lots of glass so visitors had excellent sightlines, but also, "mesh screens to delineate internal space, and to help people move around the rooms easily. The building is big, but the floor plan is designed to be comfortable. It is meant to give people a sense of space, but at the same time, a feeling of going somewhere," says Wellwood. The LEED - Gold buildings site was raised 1.5 metres to avoid being at f loodplain level. It will have native plants and several measures are used for water conservation, including rainwater capture from the roof, says Karina Verhoeven, an associate at 02 Planning + Design Inc. There were several challenges in construction. The main staircase abuts a concrete wall with architectural reveals. They are in specific locations, so the formwork had to accommodate these non - standard details. "It had to be changed as we added more concrete," says Elena Dmitrieva, construction project manager at Cana Management Ltd. The site had once been a landfill. "So there was debris. After extensive geotechnical investigation, it was decided we needed to sink deep piles to a minimum depth of 20 metres," says Pan Ng, senior principal of structural engineering discipline at Stantec Consulting Ltd. Maxing the light that streams into the atrium entailed non - uniform steel trusses with irregular diagonals. Some were decorative, although most were structural. The key, says Ng, was to ensure that they would be stable in the case of high winds and possible seismic activity.
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