This past week I had the opportunity to visit the Biomuseo in Panama City, Panama. I have been interested in Frank Gehry’s work since first visiting the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles many years ago, so it was great to see this project, completed in 2014, as it was an amazing evolution in Frank Gehry’s design.
The Biomuseo is situated along the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal and draws your eye from both the canal as well as from Panama City. It is difficult to miss the building and its colorful roof lines from anywhere in the region.
The project itself is impressive, but I genuinely enjoyed the unique design solutions that Frank Gehry and his team employed. One of the first that I noticed were the roof channel drains that were incorporated in the panelized roof to funnel rain into cisterns on the site.
The choice of reflective steel for the roof structure allow the colorful panels to reflect on the underside of the structure in the daylight, creating a canvas of color as you look up from the floor of the foyer.
Having worked in civil engineering for almost two decades, I also focused substantially too much attention on the drains that were drilled into the outdoor floor slab. It was a unique solution to remove water while maintaining a consistent surface. It seems that great design is consistently facilitated by creative design detailing.
There were so many unique project features that it would be difficult to capture them all here, but the following photos will show you some of my favorites:
- The open atrium spaces used for instruction.
- Windows that were tucked behind the colorful panels bringing light into the building while maintaining the panels as the central design focus on the outside of the building.
- The impressive exposed steel structure: this building would make any structural engineer happy, both in terms of complexity (imagine the wind load calculations along the Pacific Ocean for those panels) but also in that the structure itself is an integral part of the architecture.
- The use of curved walls to complement the predominately flat panel design.
- Seating areas overlooking the Pacific coast entrance to the Panama Canal, where you can watch ships line up day and night to begin their journey to the Atlantic Ocean.
- The fluid connection between the architecture and landscaping.
