California Academy of Sciences Reopens

The Living Roof

Flickr slideshow here.

This fall Saturday morning, San Francisco celebrates the return of California Academy of Sciences inside Golden Gate Park. This 10 year project features a planetarium, a natural history museum, a 4-story rainforest and a 212,000 gallon replica of a Philippine Coral Reef mostly based from Anilao, Batangas.

ABC 7 on Friday night featured a TV special on the new high-tech structure which showcase environmentally friendly features such as 60,000 photovoltaic cells, recycled building materials, and 2.5 acres of living roof with wild California flora all to the tune of $500M bucks. 

Needless to say, my 3 year old and 8 year old daughters survived the 5 hour waiting in line without much complaints until we got inside.

As we were browsing through the Philippine Coral Reef exhibit, I was caught off guard by something that looked familiar from not so long ago. The female uniform at Philippine Science High School:

Solar panels with the de Young Museum in the distance

Amazon river biotope

Philippine Coral Reef exhibit with 30'x50' acrylic panel

Morrison Planetarium [Wired Science video here]

Philippine Tarsier in photo for 50 Million Years Ago

Oh, and by the way, speaking of free access to museums, did you know that you can get in to a some participating museums across the US with your Bank of America card on select weekends of the month?

For October, the free weekend would be the weekend of October 4 and 5. Fore more info check out: http://promotions.bankofamerica.com/museums/

-kyo-