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An Apollonaut travel guide
A museum in the park.
An introduction to Golden Gate Park’s Music Concourse, where the California Academy of Sciences faces the de Young Museum.
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Read the park from the concourse
The Academy stands at 55 Music Concourse Drive in Golden Gate Park, across the concourse from the de Young Museum. The park stretches west towards the Pacific, with the city’s neighbourhoods on either side.
A city guide can give context without turning a neighbourhood into a backdrop. Notice how the museums, gardens and paths of the park fit together, and how people move between them.
Glass, steel and a planted roof
Renzo Piano’s building brings its exhibits together under one roof, with the planetarium dome and the glass rainforest dome inside and a planted roof above.
Begin with a detail and ask how it was made and maintained. A photograph alone cannot tell you how a roof was planted or a dome built, or the conditions in which people worked.
An Academy chapter
The California Academy of Sciences shows one side of San Francisco: a scientific society that rebuilt after the city’s great earthquakes and kept its collections growing.
Look at the meeting of the two: a research institution behind the scenes, and a museum where visitors can see the living and the preserved side by side.
Make room for context
Pair this city reading with the Academy’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places or represents their makers.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
