Managing Architect
ESG Architects
Designing Architect
Thorbeck Architects
Construction Manager at Risk
JE Dunn
Civil Engineer
Wenck Associates
Mechanical/Electrical Engineer
LKPB Engineers
Total Square Footage
71,000 GSF
Project Cost
$36.1 Million |
 |
The new 71,000 gross square foot Bell Museum of Natural History will be located on a 13-acre site at the southwest corner of Larpenteur Avenue and Cleveland Avenue on the St. Paul campus.
The museum facility and grounds will include indoor and outdoor exhibit space, gallery space for traveling exhibits, galleries for the best of the museum’s dioramas, a 300-seat auditorium, classrooms, community rooms, a café, and a gift shop. The exterior of the museum will feature native Minnesota materials and large dramatic vistas and the grounds will be landscaped with 12 acres of highly interactive outdoor space representing Minnesota’s three ecosystems—prairie, north woods coniferous forest, and maple-basswood deciduous forest. The building and landscape will be designed to attract wildlife and will include trails, ponds, observation posts and a range of nesting sites for birds, bats, flying squirrels, and other creatures.
Locating the museum on the St. Paul campus will allow museum educators to work more closely with, and more easily introduce the public to, one of the largest environmental biology research programs (over forty academic departments and interdisciplinary centers) in the world. Bell Museum faculty will teach many of their undergraduate and graduate courses in this new faculty. The building and accompanying outdoor exhibit spaces will serve the on-campus community of environmental biology students, staff, and faculty and function as an effective and inviting gateway to the St. Paul campus. This innovative institution will be a portal through which the public can explore the natural world and witness, first hand, cutting edge University research.
Project Timeline
| Spring 2008 |
Design Complete |
| Summer 2008 |
Construction Begins |
| Winter 2010 |
Construction Complete |
| Spring 2010 |
Exhibit Development |
| Summer 2010 |
Open |
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