Alyssa Cwanger "Articulated Cloud" is the name of the wind sculpture that surrounds the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh's new building, which links the existing museum to the former Buhl Planetarium. The project more than triples the museum's indoor space. Click photo for larger image. Related article: The Real Deal: Museum promises hands-on fun with "stuff"

In Maira Kalman's children's book "Max Makes a Million," Max the dog, an unpublished poet and canine-about-town, has a secure life with a childless, older couple but dreams of living in Paris.

"There is an old Chinese proverb that says parents must give their children two things, roots and wings," Max says. "I have the roots. Now I want the wings." After he strikes it rich in the poetry biz, Max is able to fulfill his dream.

Architects Julie Eizenberg and Hank Koning remembered reading the story to their sons, Jak and Rem, now teens, when they were small. For the couple, "roots and wings" seemed just the right metaphor for their design of the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh's expansion and its mission.

The Children's Museum was rooted in the past -- the old Allegheny Post Office building of 1897, which it had outgrown. It planned to expand into another historic structure, the former Buhl Planetarium, completed in 1939 and vacant since 1991. To link these Classical and Moderne buildings, Koning Eizenberg Architects of Santa Monica, Calif., proposed a glass lantern for their winning entry in the museum's design competition of 2000. The new wing also would be a metaphorical wing that would take children to new experiences and expand their worlds.

The lantern's folded planes gave it the look of a giant rice paper lamp, which the museum said would be a beacon and "night light," symbolizing care for children. But practicality soon reared its head.

"The Children's Museum was the first building we've done where Hank had no clue how we were going to build it," Eizenberg said at a talk to Carnegie Mellon University architecture students a few weeks ago.

As it turned out, that lantern proved too expensive to build. Its basic idea, however -- linking the two historic buildings with a contemporary glass box -- was not only sound, but the simplest of all the solutions, and one that had minimal impact on the historic buildings.

Around the same time, California-based sculptor Ned Kahn, who'd been commissioned to create an outdoor water sculpture for the museum, nixed that idea because Pittsburgh winters are too cold for it to operate year-round. Thus was born a collaboration between Kahn and the architects that generated a different kind of lantern, one whose glass walls are shielded from the sun by about 43,000 thin, translucent plastic flaps, each 5 1/2 inches square.

Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette A decorative cow by artist Burton Morris stands guard on the second floor, looking out to the stairway leading to the Children's Museum's entrance. The "Articulated Cloud" wall on the exterior of the building is in view from this vantage point. Click photo for larger image.

When the wind ripples across the flaps, it creates waves of motion that look like clouds floating across the sky -- a subtle, sophisticated effect that, rather than talking down to children, speaks to the child in all of us.

The piece, called "Articulated Cloud," allows the building to achieve a synthesis of art and architecture, one that is a playful, mysterious and inventive expression of green design. The flaps hang on stainless steel rods attached to a boldly graphic aluminum frame that is visible from within the new building's second- and third-floor exhibits. They act as sunscreens that will keep the glass from overheating.

"Articulated Cloud" is one of the $22.5 million expansion's many green features that will have the building itself functioning as its largest exhibit for children.

"The architecture is as much about experience as knowledge and object," Eizenberg said in an e-mail. "We did want to highlight the beauty of the old buildings as well as add the kinds of spaces that you couldn't make then but can now. We wanted to show how things are made and demonstrate environmentally sustainable strategies."

It will be the first children's museum to achieve the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

The museum's staff and board decided early on that the expansion would be a green design. Its first year of planning was funded in part by the Heinz Endowments, the foundation leader in green design in Western Pennsylvania. Green features that would earn LEED certification were a requirement of the design competition, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

"It's a natural extension of our mission, and it goes to best practices," said architect Chris Siefert, the museum's project manager. "We are establishing a national model for children's museums."

The museum will draw all of its energy from renewable resources, purchasing wind and hydroelectric power from a green energy company and generating solar power with its own photovoltaic collector panels on the roof of the Buhl wing.

	Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette The Garage Workshop exhibit comes together as the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh prepares for its grand re-opening Saturday after a multimillion-dollar expansion project. This space, originally part of the planetarium, includes this new sculpture by Henry Loustau, who was working on it last week. Click photo for larger image.

The museum's education department is working with Pittsburgh's Green Building Alliance to develop interpretive programs for children about the building's green features. One of its principles -- water conservation -- can be demonstrated at the touch of a button: the dual-flush toilets that allow users to choose between a big flush and a little flush.

The wall that encloses the museum's outdoor play area is made of wire-wrapped, rec-tangular bundles of masonry building materials, from bricks to balusters, recycled from this and other building projects. It recalls, on a small scale, Alexandr Brodsky's elegiac "Palazzo Nudo" installation Downtown at Seventh Street and Penn Avenue, gone but not forgotten.

With the expansion, built by Mascaro Construction Co., the museum more than triples its indoor space, from 19,000 to 74,000 square feet. The public and exhibit areas will grow from about 11,000 to approximately 40,000 square feet.

The new building, erected over a now-closed portion of Allegheny Square West street, is the museum's new main entrance. Its first floor is a gathering place where visitors will begin to make choices about what to experience first.

They can turn left into the old Post Office building, whose first floor houses the art studio. They can head directly upstairs and visit the Mister Rogers, Waterplay and other exhibits. Or they can turn right, into the Buhl's formerly windowless grand hall, now a cafe illuminated by a new floor-to-ceiling window. Giant, inflatable sculptures designed by Tim Kaulen and powered by the rooftop solar collectors are expected to be installed this week.

Eizenberg, who saw something similar used to light a path from parking to a jazz concert held in a Hollywood cemetery, said she used them to bring down the vast scale of the room.

Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette A Classical frieze at the roofline of the Buhl building is now visible inside the new building. In the background, Vickie Watson, Children's Museum project assistant, walks through the Waterplay exhibit. Click photo for larger image.

The museum commissioned 12 artists to produce playful work for the expansion, almost all of it interactive. One of the most prominent, installed in the Buhl's former planetarium dome, is Henry Loustau's ball maze, in which children can launch kickball-sized plastic balls onto wires and follow their descending path.

The Buhl basement has become the children's cafeteria for school groups, and its lower level, where for decades the Christmas train display was housed, now holds a theater and a radio studio, from which the Saturday Light Brigade will broadcast from 6 a.m. to noon on Saturday mornings on WRCT (88.3 FM). Show host Larry Berger is developing programs to use the studio throughout the week, some involving the museum's education department and its on-site and other partners.

One of museum director Jane Werner's big ideas for the expansion was to create a campus of organizations devoted to child advocacy. The museum, Siefert said, will function like a town square, a gathering place where visitors and organizations will come together for experiences and discourse about children, families and the community.

The Buhl's upper floors will house the Reading is FUNdamental program and Childwatch Pittsburgh, which focuses on at-risk children. In February, two model, daylong preschool programs with art-based curricula are scheduled to open, run by the Pittsburgh Public Schools. Graduate students from the University of Pittsburgh Learning, Research and Development Center also will be housed there and will track a group of children over time.

The Buhl building's new window provides a view of the venerable Allegheny branch of Carnegie Library, another feature of the children's campus.

Max, dog poet and big dreamer, would approve.