The Gilder Center, viewed from above, is nestled among the many buildings on the campus of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, standing out for its white forms. Only when coming in front of the main façade, entering from Theodore Roosevelt Park, can we truly appreciate the idea and inspiration behind Studio Gang’s project. A Milford pink granite cladding makes for a bright façade, undulating and irregular throughout its height. Punctuated by enormous windows of different shapes and sizes, it creates a composition that evokes the phenomenon of geological stratification from the outside, a concept that inspires the interiors’complex architecture. As we come into the Kenneth C. Griffin Exploration Atrium, this becomes immediately clear.

The grandeur of its interior landscape of five floors is flooded with natural light and shaped like a natural geological formation with vaults, bridges, canyons, openings, and roundness. Its “morphological” system appears as if it were shaped by the erosive action of wind and water. The shotcrete technique used to build it is more commonly used for infrastructures. The structural concrete was sprayed directly into the cages of the curved reinforcements to shape a seamless hand-finished landscape, visually and physically continuous. The functional spaces on the different floors are dynamically connected by a central hub, leading visitors to explore and discover the vast scientific heritage of the AMNH. The Exhibition Core is home to new exhibition galleries, designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates jointly with the Museum’s Exhibition