The Bay Area Discovery Museum is located on historic Fort Baker just north of San Francisco. It is a wonderful place for young children and families to explore and learn about the natural and physical wonders of the region.
One exhibit zone is called the “Wave Workshop.” It features several interactive displays that invite kids to experiment and manipulate air and water currents and observe effects on various objects. The central feature, the “Race Table,” provides an opportunity for kids to assemble custom foam ‘boats’ for exciting, windy and wavy racing games.
Museum staff, however, were concerned that the water level of the table was too deep and posed a potential safety hazard. Tenji was contracted to remedy the issue by creating a false bottom that allowed for the same racing action, but in substantially shallower water. It was also an opportunity to add some color by using vivid blue acrylic and upgrade the circulation system to improve water quality and ease maintenance.
The project is now complete and the kids can get back to their racing fun!
The Canadian Museum of Nature has created a very nice blog about setting up their new aquarium designed by Tenji. Lots of great information about their experiences with establishing a biofilter and learning about fish behavior.
Canadian Museum of Nature's new blog about setting up their Tenji aquarium.
“Renovations to Discovery Place’s Tryon Street facility will help us bring science to life in a topical and contemporary way that we hope will inspire and educate visitors of all ages,” says John Mackay, the museum’s president and chief executive.
Since the grand opening in September 2008, the California Academy of Sciences has been offering a feeding demonstration and public program at their popular Lagoon exhibit. Biologists that delivered the program had to sit on, or stand behind, the guard rail at a corner of the lagoon…a very awkward position for doing this work.
Recently, the Academy contracted with Tenji to help make things a little more elegant for the program. Working with the Academy, Tenji developed and installed a Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic (FRP) triangular platform that is flush with the curb, is visually unobtrusive, and engineered to hold staff, plus ‘100 lbs of shark’ (for animal transfer episodes). Now, once they pass through the gate in the railing, the biologists are out of the public space, but in full view of the visitors on their new program ‘stage.’
Tenji completed installation of a new, four-sided view aquarium exhibit for the Canadian Museum of Nature’s new Water Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario. This exhibit will display local species of fish, plants, and invertebrates.
Tenji is hard at work installing a series of exhibits for Anchorage’s new Imaginarium at the Anchorage Museum. We will update with new photos as the exhibits and Life Support Systems (LSS) progress.
An aquarium that Tenji designed and built for the California Academy of Sciences’ Academy Cafe was just featured in the New York Times. See this page for the article.
Tenji designed and built this aquarium. Photo by Ryan Hughes.
Recently, our long-time colleagues at the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito re-contacted us for some support. Their children’s waterplay exhibit felt a tad too deep for their comfort so we developed a prototype to test safer, shallower depths that still allowed for activity function and water circulation. The test was a quick success and the new, permanent installation is in the design process. Stand by for future updates!
Things have been blossoming well at the residence in Monterey. The client requested a state-of-the-art aquarium to act as a transparent ‘living’ wall between the office and his garage of race cars. The goal was to create a view that combined both his love of cars and tropical reef fish.
A standard rule of thumb at Tenji is that if your aquarium systems are hard to work on, their appearances tend to be less-than-ideal. We recently helped the California Academy of Sciences improve access and safety parameters to several of their aquariums and life support equipment areas with these engineered, corrosion-free fiberglass (FRP) platforms and ladders.
So, while it is not as glamorous as some of the other wild endeavors we have going on, it is rewarding to know that access AND staff safety have been improved.
