Design That Appeals to Kids of All Ages

By Nicole Wallace

Mister Rogers sparked some major changes in the neighborhood for the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.

In 1998, more people visited the museum’s exhibit on the popular children’s television program during its first

six months than had come to the museum the entire previous year. The increased attendance not only strained the capacity of the historic 1890s post office that had been the museum’s home for 20 years, but also signaled to the organization that, with more space, it could be serving far more youngsters.

“I really like kids, but 120,000 kids in 20,000 square feet was just way too many,” says Jane Werner, the museum’s executive director. “We really knew we needed to expand.”

The museum acquired the 1939 Buhl Planetarium building, which stood next to the post office and had been vacant since the Carnegie Science Center moved downtown in 1991. To link the two historic buildings, the museum built a contemporary light-filled structure.

The building project cost $12.5-million, and the museum spent $3-million on new exhibits. The museum commissioned $500,000 of interactive art for the new space, and one piece became part of the building itself.

When the museum hired him, Ned Kahn, a San Francisco environmental artist and a 2003 winner of a MacArthur “genius” award, had at first planned to design a work using water. But, says Ms. Werner, every time he came to Pittsburgh, it was cold. So he instead worked with the building’s architects to turn the exterior façade into a wind sculpture of 40,000 tiny polycarbonate pieces that flutter in the breeze.

“When it’s windy — which is often — it is just a stunning piece,” says Ms. Werner. “It looks like water. The whole building moves.”

The exterior wall behind the sculpture is glass, and on sunny days, the movement of the sculpture creates changing patterns of light and shadow on the second and third floors of the museum.

In its exhibits, the museum avoids computer and television screens that transmit information that children receive in a passive way.

“We think those are very isolating experiences,” says Ms. Werner. “You don’t necessarily talk to one another when you’re playing a computer game or you’re watching a television show.”

But the museum is not averse to using technology if it promotes interaction.

In a piece called “Text Rain,” created by the installation artists Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv, children face a wall and see black-and-white video images of themselves with animated letters falling down around them. They can move to catch the letters, and working together, kids can start to form words and sentences.

Ms. Werner says that “Text Rain” appeals to youngsters of all ages.

“If you are just learning your letters, you can kind of just bounce them,” she says. “I’ve seen 3-year-olds just going ‘T, T, T,’ and dancing around.”

Outside, another artist, Steven Eisenhauer, created “Animated Earth,” three vats of bubbling liquid clay that children can play with. The children control the flow of air into the clay, determining whether there will be a gentle bubbling or explosive agitation.

Ms. Werner believes that too many people underestimate children and their ability to learn through art.

“We don’t do cute here at the Children’s Museum,” she says. “We’ll do silly, but we won’t do cute. We have a tendency to talk down to kids, when in fact — even when we talk about design — they get it. They understand when things are designed well.”