What do you get for the citizens of a city for its 300th birthday? Marshall Field had a good solution: The retailer treated Detroit to a "Weekend of Wonder" this past weekend and invited Motor City's residents to tour Neumann Smith & Associates' New Detroit Science Center—free of charge—for "32 hours of exploration."

Begun three years and $30 million dollars ago, the architect's design for the New Detroit Science Center adds 65,000 square feet, doubling the existing science center's square footage and increasing the exhibit space by 10 times. The architects' charge was to repair and renovate the 30-year-old Science Center, which boasted one of the world's first domed IMAX© theaters.

"The challenge was to achieve program goals within a very tight budget," the architect reports, "roughly one-third the dollars per square foot used to build most contemporary American museums."

Within the existing space, major considerations for the project included integrating the IMAX© theater more closely with the exhibit space, reconnecting science rooms to the general building circulation, and increasing vertical circulation. The architects also were able to tie elements together visually through use of "bold geometry, vibrant colors, and materials evocative of the city's industrial heritage," they say. For instance, the red cylinder of the existing theater is now counterbalanced by the bright blue brick form of a new planetarium.

The Weekend Wonder visitors saw the center's debut performance of the IMAX© movie "Journey into Amazing Caves" and virtually shivered through the spelunker trip through underground ice caves shown on a 3½-story-tall, 67-foot-diameter dome screen, which has been enhanced with advanced visual and sound technologies. Visitors also were among the first people to test drive the center's five laboratory areas, which foster exploration of:
• Motion
• Life Sciences
• Matter and Energy
• Waves and Vibrations
• The Ameritech Children's Gallery, featuring hands-on activities that include exploring the rain forest, conjuring up tornadoes, and watching a three-story-tall Foucault's Pendulum.

The inaugural traveling exhibit in the center's 8.700-square-foot Science Hall is "Beakman's World on Tour," based on the popular kid's show Beakman's World™. Paul Zaloom, aka Beakman, was at hand at the grand opening, as was Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

Other places of fascination within the new center include the:
• DaimlerChrysler Science Stage and Sparks Theater, a 1,650-square-foot space for changing science-in-action programs, which can include air-hover cars and antigravity displays
• Ford Learning Resource Center, five activity rooms—plus a teacher resource center—to foster hands-on, inquiry-based learning, including professional development (All the exhibits within the center are aligned with the State of Michigan's goals for science education.)
• The blue-bricked Digital Dome Planetarium, which will open this fall, one of the few facilities in the world that uses "Digistar®" digital technology to project computer-generated images.

Evidently, the citizens of Detroit found much to like in the new center. The Detroit Free Press reports that the July 28 opening-day crowds were at capacity—3,000 people at a time—for the duration.

The project, on which Neumannn Smith collaborated with BEI Associates, Russell Design, and Walbridge Aldinger, is also very much a community collaborative effort likely to spur further urban renaissance in the Motor City. Its major contributors include the State of Michigan, Kresge Foundation, DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company, and General Motors.

Copyright 2001 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.