Sustainability at the California Academy of Sciences: Integrated operations, programs, exhibits and outreachAaron PopeManager of Sustainability Programs, California Academy of Sciences

4

41

4342 Greener Museums Sustainability at the California Academy of Sciences

The California Academy of Sciences was formed in San Francisco in 1853, with a mission to promote science through exhibition, education and research. The building and most of the exhibits and collections at the original downtown location were destroyed by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, whereupon the Academy re-established itself in Golden Gate Park in 1916. During the ensuing decades the Academy expanded its facilities, exhibits and programs, becoming a world-class natural history museum, aquarium and planetarium. Over time the buildings and infrastructure deteriorated, and the effects of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake precipitated a review of the institution’s infrastructure, completed in 1992. The review concluded that the Academy facility was no longer safe and needed to be rebuilt.

Over the next decade the vision of the new Academy took shape. Numerous community groups, members, staff scientists, futurists, planners, and museum and aquarium professionals were asked by the Academy’s senior leadership, “What should the Academy of the 21st century look like?” The Academy’s mission is to “explore, explain and protect the natural world,” and one of the clear directives that emerged from this discovery process was that the new facility, and the organization itself, must position itself as a sustainability leader to continue fulfilling its mission. The new Academy needed to not only minimize its own environmental impact, but also make a statement about the importance and viability of building and operating sustainably. The selection of Renzo Piano as the new building’s principal architect in 1999 helped to cement this direction. Renzo’s vision was of a building intimately connected to the surrounding environment and its natural weather systems. He pictured lifting up a slice of Golden Gate Park and tucking the new Academy building underneath. He envisioned expansive walls of glass and clear sightlines throughout the building to blur the boundaries between the interior and the outside park. Integrating this vision with the exhibitry needs of the Academy resulted in a design for the world’s largest, LEED platinum certified public building. The Academy closed its doors to the public in Golden Gate Park at the end of 2003 and opened its temporary transition facility in the spring of 2004. Groundbreaking for the new facility occurred in September 2005. After two years of construction and one year of exhibit completion and fit-out, the new Academy opened to the public in September 2008. In its first two years of operation, the new Academy welcomed nearly 4 million visitors.

4544 Greener Museums Sustainability at the California Academy of Sciences

Facility Overview The principal aquarium exhibitions feature a Philippine coral reef, rainforests of the world, the Northern California coast, and a southern swamp. Other exhibitions showcase the Academy’s long-standing and ongoing research in the Galapagos Islands and Madagascar, and a series of renovated dioramas present the diverse habitats of Africa. There is also a major exhibition area that focuses on global climate change. A combination of interpretive methods are used throughout the facility, with an emphasis on person-to-person interactions, live animal presentations and interactive technologies. Topped by a one-hectare (2.5 acres) living roof, the building employs a wide range of energy saving materials and technologies. The roof is bordered by a glass canopy containing 60,000 photovoltaic cells, which produce up to 8% of the Academy’s annual power needs and prevent the release of over 55.5 tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year. Radiant floor heating reduces heating energy needs, while heat recovery systems capture and utilize heat produced by HVAC equipment. The undulating roofline draws cool air into the building and naturally ventilates the adjacent exhibit spaces through automatically controlled skylights, and at least 90% of the regularly occupied spaces have access to natural daylight and outside views. These features combine to help lower the Academy’s energy use significantly. Advanced features help the Academy conserve water as well. The building reduces potable water use through low-flow fixtures, waterless urinals, use of Golden Gate park groundwater to water its living roof and landscaping, improved aquarium life support systems, and by piping in saltwater for the aquarium directly from the Pacific Ocean, just a few

miles away. The improved life support systems ensure that aquarium water can be recycled many times before disposal. The living roof reduces storm water run-off by more than 14,000 cubic meters (3.6 million gallons) per year, as well and provides habitat for a range of local animal and plant species. Recycled materials also play a big part in the building’s story. Over 90% of the demolition waste from the old Academy was recycled in local construction projects. In the new building, recycled steel was used for 100% of the building’s structural steel. At least 50% of the wood was sustainably harvested and certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. The insulation in the walls is made from recycled blue jean scraps, a renewable, cotton resource that is non-toxic. The building’s concrete is composed of 50% industrial by-product. Construction project managers Don Young and Associates (San Francisco) estimated that the incremental construction costs associated with the green design were about 5%-10% of the total construction costs. An exact figure is impossible to determine since the building was designed from the ground up to be sustainable, and there are no comparable, conventional museum/aquarium/planetarium facilities to use as a baseline. The Academy building is receiving a high level of attention from the media and visitors because of its cutting-edge, green design. According to visitor surveys, the architecture itself is the second most popular draw for visitors, ahead of the planetarium and natural history museum. Investing in such a high-profile design has proven to be a sound decision from the standpoint of the Academy’s attendance goals, but a less tangible benefit has been to showcase what is possible in the field of green building

4746 Greener Museums Sustainability at the California Academy of Sciences

design. By providing transparency and communicating design weaknesses as well as strengths, the Academy strives to offer practical guidance and inspire future efforts. As a state-of-the-art, and in many ways experimental, facility, the building incorporates many innovative features that have not been implemented before. Most of the building’s systems are performing as intended, but there have been some unintended results, and the Academy is making every attempt to pass these lessons along to other, interested parties. An example of this type of lesson, one that any future green museum design teams would be wise to consider, is the reality that passively cooled spaces lack the necessary temperature and humidity controls to properly display museum collection specimens. As a result, a significant portion of the Academy exhibit resources over the past two years have been spent retrofitting a large, HVAC controlled exhibition space, as well as building many smaller, individual climate controlled specimen cases.

Sustainability Goals Sustainability can be defined in many ways, and the Academy felt the need to publically define its understanding of the concept. Soon after opening, a “sustainability statement” was crafted and approved by the Academy’s senior leadership team and Board of Trustees. This statement was published on the Academy website in 2008, where it has been available ever since.

Academy Sustainability StatementSustainability is often defined as meeting current human needs without endangering our descendants. There is a broad,

scientific consensus that our current environmental demands are unsustainable, causing climate change, degradation of natural habitats, loss of species, and shortages of essential resources. The California Academy of Sciences’ mission to explore, explain and protect the natural world compels the Academy to engage in scientific research relevant to sustainability, to raise public awareness about these urgent problems, and to minimize its own environmental impact.The Academy’s green building signifies its commitment to sustainability. The culture and internal practices mirror that commitment in the areas of energy, water, waste management, transportation, purchasing and food. Academy programs highlight the living world and its connection to the changing global environment. Academy research focuses on the origins and maintenance of life’s diversity, and its expeditions roam the world, gathering scientific data to answer the questions, “How has life evolved, and how can it be sustained?”

The Academy’s specific sustainability goals have evolved into prioritizing sustainable operations, developing programs and exhibits to help the general public understand sustainability and to empower them to make changes in their own lives, acting as an advisor for other organizations to help reduce their environmental impact, and disseminating the Academy’s sustainability efforts internally and externally.

Sustainable OperationsAlthough not every sustainable building project will benefit from a complex certification process such as the US Green Building Council’s LEED program, going through LEED’s New Construction certification process played a crucial role for the

Academy by providing it with an existing framework during the design phase. It supplied a check list and a series of concrete performance targets to work towards, negating the need for the Academy to come up with standards on its own. In a similar vein, the Academy is currently pursuing another type of LEED certification, Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance (O&M), to fine-tune its sustainable operating practices, as well as demonstrate its continuing environmental commitment to the world. LEED O&M certification standards cover a wide array of operational areas, such as water use, energy use, landscape management, pest control, purchasing, and waste management. All certified facilities must apply for recertification at least every five years, encouraging ongoing stewardship. While the one-and-a-half year LEED O&M certification process will not be completed until 2011, the Academy has already made many commitments in the past few years to reduce its environmental impact.

Some examples are:

• Choosing not to sell or provide plastic, bottled water• Partnering with restaurant partners who prioritize local, organic and seasonal ingredients• Requiring on-premise caterers to adhere to strict sustainability guidelines• Sourcing aquarium animals and food supplies from sustainable sources • Minimizing the amount and impact of printed materials sent out for marketing purposes• Incentivizing staff and visitors to use public transportation• Continually expanding energy use reduction strategies

• Continually expanding potable water use reduction• Reducing, reusing and recycling exhibit materials

Sustainable operations are not only part of the Academy’s core mission - they also deliver many other benefits, including: the long-term financial benefits of adopting efficient technologies; an increased credibility for the institution’s sustainability messaging; the setting of a positive example for others to follow; and increased visitorship and public support.

Internal CultureAn empowered, supportive Academy staff is essential for operating sustainably. Fostering a “culture of sustainability” inside the institution has been an ongoing process, involving staff training on sustainability basics, staff-wide communication emails, utilization of San Francisco municipality staff expertise, green-themed staff events, and an active Greenteam with an open-membership policy. A quarterly, half-day sustainability orientation session is now mandatory for all new Academy staff members, and more experienced staff members are also encouraged to attend. The Academy recognizes that successfully nurturing staff excitement and participation on sustainable issues will require constant efforts to shape and improve the internal culture of the Academy. All departments are involved to some extent in green efforts, and so future initiatives must continue to reach out to all staff members.

Public Programs and ExhibitsLike many museums, the Academy’s reputation as a trusted source of information provides a much great opportunity to protect the natural world, through public programs and

4948 Greener Museums Sustainability at the California Academy of Sciences

5150 Greener Museums Sustainability at the California Academy of Sciences

exhibits. Sustainability education is integrated into many exhibits and visitor amenities throughout the Academy. In the aquarium, signage highlights the serious threats that the oceans face, and showcases inspiring local conservation efforts underway across the globe, from San Francisco to Indonesia. At the Building Green exhibit, visitors can learn about the sustainable design of the building and how similar strategies can make their own homes more efficient. Restroom messages remind visitors to conserve water and offer inspirational quotes. The living roof railing graphics explain the benefits of living roofs for buildings. And in the climate change exhibit, interactive tools and activities empower visitors to become part of the solution. This environmental focus is also woven into the Academy’s public floor staff presentations, audio tours, behind-the-scenes tours, handouts, intern and docent programs and neighborhood outreach. The various initiatives contribute to a multi-layered approach, intended to help the Academy reach the widest possible audience and have the largest impact. Another of the Academy’s goals is to help foster a sense of connection between visitors and the environment. In today’s society, there is a growing chasm between many people’s modernized, urban lives and the natural world. The Academy’s exhibits and programs attempt to bridge that gap by providing inspiring experiences for visitors who would not otherwise get the chance to develop an emotional attachment to the wild places of the Earth. With no emotional attachment, people are unlikely to prioritize protecting the natural systems which actually support humans and all other forms of life.

Teacher Institute on Science and SustainabilityOne of the most successful, and potentially impactful, sustainability programs at the Academy is the Educational Department’s Teacher Institute on Science & Sustainability. Numerous indicators point to a lack of effective scientific and environmental education in America’s schools. The institute was created to help fill that void, by recruiting and training teachers to develop and deliver strong formal education curricula on these important topics. Each cohort of 3rd – 5th grade teachers, selected from a large pool of applicants, is enrolled in a 2-year program. The program offers in-depth workshops, offsite visits, and a 2-week summer session. Topics covered include climate change, energy use, green building design and food choices.

Sustainability ConsultingSince opening, the Academy has been gratified to receive thousands of requests for guidance on sustainability issues. There is a constant, and seemingly inexhaustible, demand from other institutions, schools, government agencies and private corporations for information on how the Academy approaches sustainability. These come in the form of requests for specialty tours, speakers for events and conferences, interviews, exhibit and program content details, and operational best practices, as well as offers to join steering committees. A significant portion of the Sustainability Department’s bandwidth is currently devoted to handling as many of these requests as possible, and the Academy is considering how to increase its capacity in this regard.

ConclusionThe California Academy of Sciences views sustainability as

5352 Greener Museums Sustainability at the California Academy of Sciences

a journey, more than a destination. There is no such thing as a perfectly sustainable museum. All institutions have an environmental impact, and are forced to balance their resource usage with their core mission and visitor needs. At the Academy that means questioning what is possible, trying out innovative ideas, and being committed to constant improvement. The Academy has succeeded in establishing itself as an industry leader in sustainability, but its ongoing commitment implies that it has only begun to realize its potential, positive impact on the world.

Aaron PopeManager of Sustainability Programs,California Academy of Sciences