Glazer Children’s Museum
LOCATION: 110 West Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa, FL 33602
ARCHITECT: Gould Evans Affiliates
BUILT: 2010
SIZE: 53,000 SF
COST: $10,7000,000
PHOTO CREDITS: Randy Van Duienen, Architectural Photographer
WEBSITE: www.glazermuseum.org
The Glazer Children’s Museum was designed by Gould Evans Associates in collaboration with Haizlip Studios and was built by J.O. Delotto. The building cost $10.7 million to design and construct and was completed on April 30, 2010. The museum is a three-story, 53,000 SF facility that emphasizes the joy of learning in an environmentally sensitive design. Designed for children 10 years old and younger, the museum is located in Tampa’s downtown, fronting the City’s new Riverfront Park along the banks of the Hillsborough River.
Included in the museum’s program spaces are three levels of hands-on interactive exhibit spaces with 27,000 SF dedicated to permanent exhibits and 5,000 SF dedicated to traveling exhibits. A dedicated Art Lab on the second floor and two classrooms on the third floor enhance the program requirement for educative spaces.
The concept for the facility centers upon a simple box as a display case for the fun, adventure, and discovery that takes place inside. Strengthening this concept, a monolithic appearance for the facade was desired, with a modern architectural expression. White metal panels at the upper levels and a sandy stucco finish at the ground level are the perfect backdrop for playful drops of color, provided in custom shaped aluminum panel features and a beautiful mirror and glass mosaic along the building’s south elevation. Composed by Baltimore artist Mari Garner, this mosaic was inspired by the colorful dreams of childhood. At night, the facility glows with thoughtfully designed and integrated lighting within and outside the facility presenting a colorful jeweled box to the park and the city beyond.
Inside, colorful elements including floors, walls, columns, and benches lead the way to fun and adventure, working in concert with an integrated graphic wayfinding system to achieve an effective means to add further delight from the entry in the main lobby at the ground floor all the way up to the Education Center on the third floor. Along the way, a colorful climber rises two stories from the ground level, inviting young and old alike to venture into the Water’s Journey storyline set before them.
Together, these spaces, along with a welcoming entry lobby on the ground floor frontingRiverfrontPark, a rooftop terrace offering views ofRiverfrontParkand the historic minarets of theUniversityofTampaacross the river, offer the Museum a multitude of venues for special events / rental functions.
About the Architects
Gould Evans is a firm of 110 professionals providing architecture, interior design, planning, landscape architecture, and graphic design services to clients worldwide. They were established in the early 1970s and currently have offices — in Kansas City, Lawrence, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Tampa — operate as a network of affiliated organizations. Tampa based architects worked closely with Haizlip Studios on the Children’s Museum project.
Haizlip Studios specializes in creating distinctive places of learning, imagination, enrichment, and fun. They have completed more than 50 different museums and educational ‘play’ spaces for children. They were established in 1997 and have offices in Asheville, North Carolina, and Memphis, Tennessee.
