Babies and Frank Ghery

Sitting in the Rochester International Airport (a name that is bigger than the airport itself), I am forced to listen to Warm 101.3, a local soft rock station. They are dutifully playing Christmas music. It’s just after Thanksgiving and snow has delayed my flight back to New York. I'm becoming nostalgic. Rochester was a great place to grow up in: shopping at Wegman's grocery store, fishing in Lake Ontario, attending school at Rochester Institute of Technology, all are fond recollections. But, as a child, one of my happiest memories was going to the Strong Children's Museum on Chestnut Street in downtown Rochester.

The second largest children's museum in the country, the Strong Museum was originally constructed in 1982 to house the eclectic collections of Margaret Woodbury Strong. Strong was an avid collector, especially of toys. Her large assortment remains the basis for the museum’s collection today. My first memories of the Strong Museum are of the 19th century Americana assembly of plates, vases, and other everyday household items. The Skyline Diner, a 1950s style trailer diner, was the only place to eat inside the museum. The next few times I visited the Strong Museum in the late 1990s, I accompanied my younger cousins and the museum was displaying more of their toy collection. The name had been changed accordingly to the Strong Children’s Museum. Now, the museum displays only toys, has five new places to eat and has acquired another name change, the Strong National Museum of Play.

The name change coincided with the renovation and expansion of the museum in 2006. The original museum building is a simple, concrete, rectilinear shape. The floor plan is confusing throughout most of the original building. This confusion is directly related to the multiple name changes, and changes in the museums identity. The expansions seem random in some places. These spaces seem to have been tacked onto different points of the building, making the experience even more disorienting. Despite this, the individual additions are spectacular in comparison to the original building. The most delightful and whimsical expansion was the butterfly conservatory, officially named Dancing Wings Butterfly Garden. The 126,000 square foot expansion and renovation, was designed by Chaintreuil Jensen Stark, a Rochester and Buffalo, NY based firm, This LEED certified construction that was added to the southwest side of the complex received the 2007 AIA-Rochester Design Award. It includes two sections, each representing in metal and glass an abstraction of a caterpillar and a butterfly.

The caterpillar section is a large tubular space that lies horizontally along the ground connecting the main building with the butterfly section. The caterpillar is made out of 60-90% recycled materials. Bronze colored aluminum forms the undulating 3 story high exterior walls. The 200-foot-long structure ends in a 70-foot-high glass portal facing Chestnut Street. Through this portal, the inner skeleton gives the illusion of a mouth with the metal structure forming teeth. The caterpillar section functions mainly as a grand entrance to the butterfly section, uniting it with the original building. From the atrium of the caterpillar section, visitors may access the upper level of the Museum of Play, a traditional arrangement of the toy collection in glass cases. The ground level of the caterpillar is devoted to seating and acts as a conduit to the butterfly section. The flow from the organic caterpillar to the structured butterfly represents the metamorphosis that children go through. Movement from one space to another is a natural progression, ushering children into the magical butterfly habitat.

In the butterfly building form mimics function as the housing contains 800 live butterflies, along with moths, goldfish, turtles, a tortoise, finches, and button quail. Tropical foliage overtakes the garden creating a dense natural habitat for butterflies native to Africa, Central and South America, Malaysia, the Philippines, and North America. The space is incredibly warm, in color and temperature. The introduction of plants and animals is as important to the building as the architecture itself. Because these exotic plants overtake the walls and floor, your sense of place is skewed. From inside the conservatory, the ceiling is the only fully exposed surface, making the architecture a secondary element. But, because this section is distinctly different from the adjacent building, the view from outside the structure makes it stand out from its neighbors. The conservatory itself is shaped like a butterfly (although the abstract shape makes it hard to tell from the street. This is a butterfly that’s better understood from an aerial view.) The “wings” of the structure are 30 feet high at the tips and 50 feet in diameter. The structure is made of thin metal covered with panes of glass, and as seen from above, forms a figure eight. The roof of the Butterfly Garden is a tension membrane structure, made of woven fiberglass coated in Teflon, similar to the membrane structure used to cover Denver’s International Airport terminal. This membrane roof allows for insulation of the “micro-environment” of the garden, but also lets ambient light in.

With so many butterflies in a relatively small space it is easy to imagine that the butterflies themselves may be in danger, but tour hosts and interactive educational exercises are available to ensure that children and adults alike respect the garden. Susan Trien, the Director of Public Relations and Advertising for the Museum, says that visitors do not jeopardize the butterflies and are actually intrigued and delighted when butterflies land on them. To ensure the safety of both butterflies and people, attendance is limited. Only 40 visitors are allowed into the garden at a time, and all need reservations for admission.

According to Susan Trien, visitor’s reactions are consistent. Comments range from, “Wow!” to “What a luscious space!” The reactions of parents and children alike are a direct result of the expansion’s distinctive architecture. Both the caterpillar and the butterfly structures are visually intriguing. But, when children experience the butterfly garden, the exceptional design of the space leaves as lasting an impression on them as the butterflies. Strong Museum likens the expansion architecture to that of “star-chitect” Frank Gehry. Since this was a stylistic departure for the expansion designers (many of their building have been high-end residential apartments and college buildings, particularly for Rochester Institute of Technology) their collaboration with the museum was exciting. The museum’s support of such an innovative experiment speaks to their commitment to celebrating the child-like qualities of play. Yet, for the museum to formally liken the expansion design to Gehry’s architecture would suggest a sophisticated vision that embraces playfulness within the idiom of style. Both sections are architectural puns. This perspective has the unintended result of further educating children and their parents about the possibilities of building design (the concept of metamorphosis that the buildings represent does this particularly well.)

The Strong Museum of Play is dedicated “solely to the study of play as it illuminates American culture.” The museum publishes a journal on the study of play and how it aids development in children. Because the Butterfly Garden is an atypical and aesthetically pleasing building, it solidifies a sense of importance and presence to a organization that has great aspirations for positively impacting the childhood experience.

The new expansion is a refreshing addition to the Rochester landscape. Due to Rochester’s rich heritage, it is home to many historically significant buildings including the George Eastman House (J. Foster Warner, architect) and the Eastman Theater (architectural firm of Stanford White). These are beautiful examples of architecture from the past century. The vibrant juxtaposition and visual complexity that is created with the contemporary expansion of the Strong museum greatly benefits the city and its inhabitants, forming a vision for the new century.