Learning in Space
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Fun, imagination, playfulness — and superpowers! Science museums up their game.
New approaches to getting kids engaged in STEM learning are driving new forms of architecture and design in science centers across the country. As more museums deepen their embrace of hands-on, experiential, inquiry-driven models of engagement, they are tailoring their spaces to make such activities possible.
Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille are partners in Design I/O, a creative studio specializing in immersive installations. Watson says that the company began working with science museums only a few years ago. It was a moment when institutions like the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) had begun searching for ways to make their exhibits more engaging — less focused on information delivery and more on sparking curiosity and allowing for child-driven inquiry. “Up until that point, we hadn’t seen our work as belonging in a museum context; we saw it as working in an intersection of art, design, and technology, without the pedagogical content needed for a typical science museum,” he says. “But that was also the time when I think science museums were trying to be a little less typical as well — they were moving away from the pedagogical a little bit.”
Design I/O’s first foray into the world of science museums was a collaboration with NYSCI that resulted in the museum’s wildly popular exhibition, Connected Worlds. Combining design, illustration, projected image, and technology, museum visitors can shape one of several biomes — jungle, desert, wetland, mountain valley, reservoir, plains — by rerouting a common water supply and seeing how it affects plant and animal life. They soon discover that whatever happens in one part of the exhibit triggers changes in the others — so damming a stream in the wetlands might lead to transformations in the desert. By focusing on fun, imagination, and a sense of playfulness, Connected Worlds teaches kids and adults alike about such high-level concepts as feedback loops, dynamic environments, equilibrium, and causal links between what we might think of as discrete geographic places.
Watson and Gobeille had developed some of these ideas in a smaller project, Funky Forest, done for a children’s festival in the Netherlands a few years earlier, but bringing this work into a science museum created new opportunities and challenges. For one, there was the novel experience of collaborating with top scientists and researchers from MIT Media Lab, NYU’s Games for Learning Institute, Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and so on, who were part of NYSCI’s development team.
“There was a push and pull between the science and the art.… And in fact what we found is that the more unfamiliar the creatures were the more likely kids were to approach the experience with fresh or neutral eyes. It was a great encouragement for us to keep things weird.” — Theo Watson, Design I/O
“There was some early discussion about how realistic or scientific the system we were building should be, and there were talks about whether we should be incorporating the real way that, say, aquifers and water systems function, and about whether we could even realistically model that in a real-time installation,” says Watson.
“There was a push and pull between the science and the art,” he explains. “What we realized was that we had to prioritize the learning goals — encouraging systems thinking and sustainability. We realized the world doesn’t have to be a realistic world — if what we want kids to understand is feedback loops, then the creatures don’t have to be real creatures, the plants don’t have to be real plants, and so on. And in fact what we found is that the more unfamiliar the creatures were the more likely kids were to approach the experience with fresh or neutral eyes. It was a great encouragement for us to keep things weird.”
“When we were thinking about what the exhibition would look like, we had a sense of what we wanted and what we didn’t,” says Margaret Honey, the museum’s president and CEO. “We wanted it to make you feel powerful. We wanted it to make you feel like you had superpowers. We realized as soon as we saw their previous work that Emily and Theo were creating exactly that. Design I/O pushed us to up our game. They understand the importance of play and discovery and exploration, and they are computational and artistic geniuses on top of that. They raised the bar on what is possible in a science museum.”
Aruna D’Souza is a writer based in western Massachusetts. Her new book, Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts, was published by Badlands Unlimited in May 2018. She is a regular contributor to and member of the advisory board of 4Columns, and her writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Bookforum, CNN.com, and other publications. Find her on Twitter @arunadsouza or at arunadsouza.com.
