Life! Beginnings

Life! Beginnings celebrates the incredible ability of animals and plants to reproduce. In this engaging, multi-lingual, and hands-on exhibition, visitors discover how humans and all living creatures reproduce, develop, and pass on their genes to bring new life into the world.

The exhibit allows visitors to experience life’s journey from conception to birth, view real fetal specimens, and experience animal life cycles as live Sphinx Moths (Sphingidae) transform from hungry green caterpillars into hand-sized fuzzy moths.

The elegant curves of the exhibits’ main “egg” structures hide complex CNC-cut armatures inside hand-sculpted foam encapsulated with low-VOC fire retardant hard coat. These structures were further complicated by smoothly-curved projection surfaces and curving HPL graphics skillfully executed by Ravenswood Studio’s expert artisans.

The Womb Room continued the curving motif where custom white oak laminate provided shape and structure for the plywood cladding and thick wool interior. Small fixtures integrated in the curved steel bases up-light the interior space. Ravenswood Studio also seamed and bent Corian in-house, providing structure for the interactive.

Partners for this Project Include:

• Evidence Design, Exhibition Design
• Focus Lighting, Lighting Design
• Ideum, Interactives Producer
• Matteo Farinella, Illustrator
• BBI Engineering, A/V
• Build-A -Bird interactive is based on Pigeonetics from the Genetic Science Learning Center at The University of Utah
• Birth video and Make Room for Baby, originally produced by Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago and Cortina Productions