Panama Museum of Biodiversity
“Panama is the Museum”
In 2001, a visionary circle of scientists and citizens committed to saving their nation’s natural heritage by building a museum. Panama, whose neotropical forests are among the world’s most biodiverse, where 100,000 of thousands of species still live unidentified, a country with a population half that of New York City, was going to do the extraordinary: erect the equivalent of a Statue of Liberty, one standing for biodiversity.
Yet none in the circle knew how to do it. A big risk backed by little money, they convinced Frank Gehry, who in turn convinced us.
BMD has worked with Gehry Partners for over a decade, but this was to be our closest collaboration. Over 26 months we worked hand in glove, co-creating the vision, facility masterplan, exhibition programming and structure – Gehry iterating from the outside in, BMD iterating from the inside out.
The science of biodiversity is very new, and thus basic concepts continued to emerge as we explored and constructed. Museums simply don’t get designed this fast, but time and budget were of the essence. It was thrilling, gut-wrenching and utterly new.
The result is a chimera – part building, part animal, part dream, part hyper-reality.
The economy of attention was re-designed. Rather than pushing the information, we created “Devices of Wonder” that entice visitors to ask fundamental questions via two basic human emotions: wonder, then curiosity.
The museum will deliver moving, memorable experiences for farmers and aficionados alike. You can go as fast or as deep as you chose, and both experiences are valid.
And now, the team that imagined it is literally willing it into existence. Suspended by a presidential election, challenged by financial re-structuring, struck by tragic losses, and confounded by tempremental concrete, the Museum is nonetheless becoming a reality – opening in 2010.
The Panama Museum of Biodiversity will educate generations of children to come, declare biodiversity to be the true wealth of the 21st century, and act as gateway to the most unique and precious ecosphere on Earth.