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-