For immediate release: April 4, 2005

Design Workshop team to design the grounds of the
new Utah Museum of Natural History

The team of landscape architecture firm Design Workshop and exhibit designer Andrew Merriell Associates has been chosen by the University of Utah Museum of Natural History to design the grounds of the museum’s new building on land near the much-loved Bonneville Shoreline Trail on the east edge of Salt Lake City. The site is adjacent to the university’s research park and the Red Butte Botanical Gardens at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. The team will work in collaboration with the architect, Polshek Partnership of New York, to site the building, to preserve, restore and protect the site’s ecology, and enhance the grounds with special outdoor exhibits.

“We are very excited about this project’s potential to make a significant contribution to the understanding and appreciation of The Great Basin,” says Todd Johnson, Design Workshop’s chief design officer and the firm’s principal-in-charge on the project.

Chuck Ware, a principal in the firm’s Salt Lake City office who will oversee implementation of the built project, says the design team will strive to honor the wonders of the Utah landscape, including the sky, the earth and the natural processes, as well as the ways people have interpreted and inhabited the landscape over the millennia. “We consider the 17-acre site, The Great Basin and the whole state our project site,” says Ware. “And we’ve assembled a team of people who are passionate about nature and the land,” including wildlife biologist Craig Johnson of Utah State University and native plant specialist Susan Meyer of the U.S. Forest Service.

The design team was chosen because of its recognition that, by telling the story of the natural history of this spectacular and beloved setting, the design will need to be especially sensitive to its geology, vegetation, wildlife, drainage and history, as well as to community sentiments surrounding the site. Acknowledging public concern that recently arose during the environmental assessment scoping process for the project, the team is striving to reassure local residents of its intent to reverence the land. “We would like to leave the site in better condition than we found it,” says Ware. “For the people who have come to cherish this Bonneville Shoreline area, we hope that, with their help, we will be able to create a place that will celebrate the land.”

The project will depend heavily on an interdisciplinary approach. The Design Workshop/Andrew Merriell team will work closely with Polshek, with the idea of creating a new place in which the outside world flows into the museum interior, as if the building were hovering over the landscape.

“The land remembers prehistoric upheavals, changes in climate and topography, successions of plant communities, and the footfalls of all the creatures that have trod upon it,” says Merriell. “It holds amazing secrets and wonderful stories. Our job is to learn these secrets and stories and help retell them in ways that preserve the area's natural heritage and beauty. To do this we will need to find subtle ways of allowing the land to tell its own story, encouraging visitors on paths of observation and discovery.”

The interactive experiences on the immediate grounds of the museum will have the aim of fostering respect and appreciation for the land. In addition, Design Workshop anticipates doing extensive restoration of native plant communities for most of the site; restoring, protecting and enhancing its mule deer migration corridor; preserving natural drainage patterns; mitigating potential site risks such as landslide, avalanche and earthquake, and making improvements that will protect and enhance the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, which runs through the site.

The design team is well-known for its sensitive environmental work and profound educational designs. Both Johnson and Ware are LEED-certified designers, sanctioned by the U.S. Green Building Council for environmentally sensitive work. Design Workshop’s initiatives range from a current collaboration with New Urbanist architect Peter Calthorpe on the design of the sustainable Daybreak community near Salt Lake City to the sensitive placement of the Rio Grande Botanic Garden in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Merriell’s project work includes exhibits for the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa and the Weeden Island Preserve in St. Petersburg, Florida. Best known among the Polshek Partnership’s museum projects is the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Polshek will be working with local architect GSBS of Salt Lake City.