Exploring the Great Indoors

Americans spend more than 90% of their lives in buildings, says Robert Garfinkle of the Science Museum of Minnesota.

That’s one reason Garfinkle was confident that an exhibit about buildings was capable of capturing the imagination of both kids and their parents.

“There are buildings all around us and yet we don’t pay attention to them,” says Garfinkle, the project head of the Science Museum of Minnesota’s “If These Wall Could Talk: An Exhibit About Buildings,” now on display at the California Science Center.

“We don’t like them when they’re not cool enough, or we may notice them if they are falling apart. But otherwise we just go through them and we do other things with our lives. So our job was to figure out how to make the inside of the buildings--how they stand up, how they work and what they mean to us--come alive for people.”

Even though their preliminary research indicated that their target audience initially was underwhelmed by the seemingly pedestrian topic of buildings, Garfinkle and his cohorts appear to have created an exhibit with plenty of kid appeal. A visit last week to the California Science Center--where the touring exhibit will be through Sept. 6--found a bevy of energetic and curious children interacting with the various components of the eclectic “If These Wall Could Talk.”

Not surprisingly, interactivity is a key feature of the buildings exhibit.

By using a crank that shakes the floor of the display, visitors can observe how two different skyscrapers withstand an earthquake.

An educational computer game allows for even more visitor interaction. Participants can build their own virtual doghouse and in the process learn how different materials such as thatch, mud and brick hold up to natural challenges like floods, blizzards and earthquakes. The details of this display were designed specifically with children in mind.

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“When we [were creating this game] we thought about letting people design their own home,” Garfinkle explains. “But we found that kids just weren’t interested in it. We realized that adults who want to own their own house are the ones who are interested in designing a home. So we came up with the idea of doing the doghouse.” He points out that the natural disasters in the game have causes children can relate to, “like the flood is triggered when the neighbor leaves the sprinkler on too long.”

An authentic Mongolian ger is among the more fascinating items on display at “If These Walls Could Talk.” A ger is a round-shaped, low-ceilinged home made out of felt, rawhide and canvas. It is portable in order to accommodate the traditionally nomadic lifestyle of the Mongolian people.

Garfinkle says one purpose of the ger exhibit is to show lifestyle similarities between the United States and Mongolia. He points out that Mongolian gers are sophisticated structures that have heating and cooling systems. Also, many contain modern appliances, such as television sets.

“In most museums you see pictures and you read about [the displays],” says incoming fifth-grader Annie Zavidow, who was visiting the exhibit last week with her sister and mother. “But you don’t really get the feel of it. But when you’re inside of [a ger] you’re kind of like living it and it’s more fun for younger kids, older kids and even parents.”

Garfinkle is proudest of the exhibit’s “Talking House Theater,” a 10-minute theater program using an animation-like set and figures. The drama takes place in a home where various fixtures, including the thermostat, kitchen fan and water heater, become talking characters. The entire presentation is set up like a detective story in which the fedora-topped carbon monoxide detector (dubbed Sergeant CO Detector) attempts to discover the cause of the home’s high carbon-monoxide level.

One of the exhibit’s most popular features is also one of its simplest: A play area featuring building blocks allows kids to create their own structures.

“The children also look at each other’s structures and they learn from that as well,” says Shirley Radcliff, manager of special exhibitions at the California Science Center. “It’s a real social gathering, which is wonderful.”

Another activity station allows kids to build small-scale timber-frame houses without nails. A house is large enough so that a child can crawl into it after it is constructed.

Among the other components of the exhibit: a video and print display explaining how large buildings are demolished through explosives; a feature that demonstrates how various rooms and spaces differ acoustically; and a 3-D display that allows museum-goers to look down the side of a building from 40 stories above.

Garfinkle says: “I see the task of this exhibit as making us a little more thoughtful about buildings and the decisions we make about them.”

BE THERE

“If These Walls Could Talk: An Exhibit About Buildings” continues through Sept. 6 at the California Science Center, 700 State Drive, Los Angeles, (323) 724-3623. Daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. Parking, $5. Reservations required for schools and groups of 15 or more.