A lot less than a year after it was declared that DLR Group had been tapped by Jacksonville’s Museum of Science and Historical past (MOSH) to structure its 133,000-square-foot new house on the city’s downtown riverfront, a handful of renderings depicting the exterior of the remarkably expected museum have been exposed.
Signing up for DLR team for the so-called MOSH Genesis Task is local organization kasper architects + associates and SCAPE.
Inspired by the “movement and stream of water,” the design and style idea of the new museum complicated pays homage to its prominent locale together the Northbank of the St. Johns River in the revitalized Jacksonville Shipyards. The building rises from the riverfront by means of a series of terraces with a spiraling circulation ramp connecting the decreased amount to a rooftop terrace that options a sheltered party house and, of study course, delivers sweeping sights of downtown Jacksonville and over and above. As observed in a push announcement unveiling the design and style, this spiral circulation path “fluidly” connects MOSH’s a few main exhibition spaces: Pure Ecosystem, the Cultural Ecosystem, and the Innovation Ecosystem. People enter the constructing as a result of a soaring glazed atrium that “provides visibility towards the exhibitions, immersive theaters, and educational spaces even though also providing a dynamic, light-stuffed area that attracts people today into the heart of the developing.” The design and style, the museum continued, “integrates inner exhibitions with the public realm by giving exterior house for exhibitions and programming.”
In a assertion MOSH CEO Bruce Bafard heralded the team’s style and design as currently being “immediately recognizable” and surpassing “what we had imagined for the iconic Museum that our community deserves.”
“This transformational reimagining of the museum reinforces MOSH’s purpose as a vital civic establishment and a location for available, immersive and technologically state-of-the-art activities, whilst honoring its historic motivation to education,” included Vanessa Kassabian, principal and senior style and design chief with DLR Group. “We are thrilled to spouse with MOSH, kasper, and SCAPE to assistance carry this task to the neighborhood.”
Supplemental design information from DLR Group are forthcoming.
As beforehand documented by AN, MOSH—the most preferred museum in Florida’s most populous city—has been situated at its beloved but getting older current facility alongside the Southbank Riverwalk due to the fact the late 1960s. MOSH was to start with chartered as the Jacksonville Children’s Museum in 1941, getting to be the Jacksonville Museum of Arts & Sciences in 1977. In 1988, the nonprofit establishment was bestowed with its present name pursuing a significant growth and renovation venture that involved the addition of the Bryan-Gooding Planetarium (formerly the Alexander Brest Planetarium). In spite of the significant late 1980s enlargement and subsequent renovations, MOSH has steadily outgrown its 77,000-square-foot dwelling, necessitating an entirely new museum building at the Jacksonville Shipyards. A earlier announced $80 million plan to further more expand and renovate MOSH’s Southbank campus was in the long run scrapped, and the relocation plan was initially announced in Oct 2020.
The $85 million–plus MOSH Genesis project will enable the museum to “meet the expanding demand from customers for reveals and programs that inspire innovation” with focused areas for exhibitions, functions, instructional programming. Early projections have estimated that MOSH will be able to serve 58,000 students (double the pre-pandemic variety) and 469,000 visitors (a 168 % improve) yearly by transferring into substantially more spacious digs throughout the river.


Jacksonville’s Downtown Spend Authority (DIA) unanimously authorized options for the 4-acre museum site on the east aspect of the Shipyards in January a finalized $1 per yr floor lease settlement is presently remaining ironed out with the city, for each the Florida Instances-Union. The just-unveiled structure arrives soon after 8 months of evaluating the one of a kind riverfront internet site and poring more than yrs of data from neighborhood engagement classes. The design now have to be permitted by the city’s Downtown Growth Review Board.
The DLR Group–led design and style staff was chosen final August as element of a aggressive, 8-month-lengthy approach spearheaded by the MOSH Board of Trustees and the Genesis Oversight Committee. The two other finalist groups had been led by SmithGroup and Grimshaw Architects.
“MOSH will have a spectacular effects on the Jacksonville region, telling its special story of human and pure historical past and culture, innovation and present-day science,” said DLR Group Senior Principal Paul Westlake, who sales opportunities the Omaha-established global design and style firm’s Cultural + Performing Arts follow, in a previous assertion. “We are honored to be aspect of this groundbreaking undertaking and are privileged to be associates with the two kasper architects and SCAPE. Erik Kasper and his crew amazed us with their style ethos, awareness of Jacksonville procedures and their deep local community-support endeavours. Kate Orff and the SCAPE staff believe that landscape architecture can permit positive transform in communities by regenerating living infrastructure and public landscapes.”

On April 30, MOSH hosted its inaugural GALAXY fundraiser, a sold-out black-tie function that created more than $500,000 for the MOSH Genesis cash campaign. As noted by the Florida Times-Union, the museum has lifted about $33 million to date for its new $85 million property whilst that determine is envisioned to soar as the initial value estimates ended up produced back again in 2018.
The choice of an exhibition designer is forthcoming.