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"Heat" Feels the Love from Design Magazine

Birch Aquarium exhibit places in Event Design Awards

Birch Aquarium at Scripps exhibit planners went right to the pros when faced with the challenge of creating a climate change exhibit. Earlier this year, they teamed up with Bowman Design Group and exhibit designer Ed Hackley to help translate the complexities and controversies of the topic into a new exhibit that visitors of all ages would find engaging and entertaining.

The designers had already collaborated in 2004 on a global warming exhibit for the Marion Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. This time, the team would need a design to convey the most significant highlights of a half-century's worth of groundbreaking climate research done at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Their hard work did not go unnoticed. Connecticut-based Event Design magazine awarded "Feeling the Heat: The Climate Challenge" the Silver prize in museum design for the 2007 Event Design Awards. The annual awards recognize the best designs worldwide across events, exhibits and environments.

"We are proud of such a great exhibit," Birch Aquarium at Scripps Executive Director Nigella Hillgarth said. "The designers understood our goal to create an interactive experience that gets to the scientific roots of climate change. Through their own discovery, visitors can get the facts about this complex area of research and draw their own conclusions."

"Feeling the Heat: The Climate Challenge" explores the forces driving climate change through dramatic graphs, engaging videos, stunning photos, and colorful displays. The work and expertise of renowned Scripps climate researchers such as V. Ramanathan, Tim Barnett, Richard Somerville, Kim Prather, Jeff Severinghaus and the late Charles David Keeling help visitors understand how scientists track temperatures over centuries and make predictions about future climate.

Interactive stations further clarify the concepts. Visitors use a hand crank to physically experience the difference in the amount of energy needed to light an incandescent bulb and a more efficient compact fluorescent bulb. They drop tiny beads into a liquid-filled container to see how aerosol particles reduce sunlight and cause global cooling. They become weather reporters of the future in the exhibit's California Climate Newsroom 2050.

" 'Feeling the Heat' makes what scientists know about climate change accessible to the public. Given the projected impacts of climate change on people's lives, this may be the most important public education endeavor we've ever undertaken," said Debbie Zmarzly, Birch Aquarium at Scripps program scientist and "Feeling The Heat" curator.

The 2007 Event Design Awards drew entries representing every type of installation from designers and agencies worldwide. Deans from a dozen U.S. design schools judged the competition. Winners will be featured in Event Design magazine's upcoming "Best of the Best" issue.

"Feeling the Heat: The Climate Challenge" will be on display for at least two years. Come visit and learn more.

—Jessica Crawford

Related Links

• Birch Aquarium
• Scripps Oceanography