Curate Your Own Adventure

As soon as we booked tickets for New York my Instagram algorithm bombarded me with videos and images of the newly opened (2023) Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation. This Center is a four-storey extension of the American Museum of Natural History, housing an insectarium, butterfly vivarium, and some displays that highlight the museum’s collection. This post is going to focus on the architecture of the Center and the Invisible Worlds Immersive Experience.

Architecture of the Center

The architecture of the Center is stunning – absolutely stunning. It was designed by Studio Gang, an architecture and urban design firm led by architect Jeanne Gang. They wanted to create a physically and visually accessible space that sparks curiosity and raises awareness of climate change. It was also designed to be exciting, to encourage exploration and discovery for kids and adults alike. On a more practical level, the Center was built to assist with crowd management, improving visitor circulation throughout the wider museum. I’m going to share a couple of photographs then reveal whether or not I feel it met these goals.

Personally, I found this to be one of the most architecturally beautiful spaces within a museum I have ever visited. It most certainly sparked my curiosity and made me feel like I was a little insect inside a huge nest. As we walked around, it started to feel more like an above ground cave system that we were exploring. The sense of scale is unbelievable. We had to sit for a while to truly take it all in.

The finishing look/texture was achieved by spraying structural concrete onto reinforced steel foundations. This is what gives the structure a more cave-like appearance. While sitting, we saw this cute sign:

Walking around the Center, we found the signage very clear and we easily made our way through the space. From our experience, it helped with crowd management simply by offering another building where crowds could be dispersed. Everything about it was a massive tick in my book and I am so glad we decided to add this to our itinerary. After admiring the architecture, we visited the third floor for the Invisible Worlds Immersive Experience.

Invisible Worlds

Projections in museums seem to be popular at the moment as people want to have experiences that are more interactive. I am not the biggest fan of projections but decided to pay the extra $6 fee as the website mentioned something about the human brain.

After walking through a couple of context rooms, you enter this huge room filled with projections covering the walls and floor. The whole purpose of this experience is to make the invisible, visible. According to their website, ‘Invisible Worlds explores networks of life at all scales – including some that are too fast, too small, or too slow for the human eye’. Everything from the cells in a leaf to the neural pathways in the brain. There are parts of the experience where you get to be more interactive by, for example, stepping on neurons to generate the neural pathways. No surprises here but that was my favourite part. The projections are on a 12-minute loop.

It was a pretty impressive experience and worth adding if you like this kind of interactive or if you are interested in the microscopic world. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the experience.

Visiting Information

I would strongly recommend pre-booking your ticket for the American Museum of Natural History. We are here during a low season for tourism and the line was out the door and almost two blocks down the street by opening time. We could cut the queue and go straight in with our pre-purchased tickets. If you want an interactive experience, add Invisible Worlds to your ticket. Otherwise, just seeing the Gilder Center is reason enough to spend a morning/afternoon/day here.