American Museum of Natural History 

Text description provided by the architects. The 230,000-square-foot, $465 million Gilder Center project was announced in 2014 and includes six floors above ground, four of which are open to the public and one below. He created 33 connections between the museum's 10 buildings to connect the entire campus and create a new entrance on the museum's west side, at Columbus Avenue and 79th Street, in Theodore Roosevelt Park. Visitors from Columbus Avenue experience the Gilder Center as a building set in a park, constructed at the same height as the old museum buildings that surround it, with gentle flowing curves. The adjacent areas of the park are enhanced by a new landscape design, developed by Reed Hilderbrand with community input, that features more paths and seating areas.

The Gilder Center's undulating facade provides a visual link between the two sides of campus, with attractive expanses of bird-safe tempered glass clad in pink Milford granite, the same stone used in the Central Park west entrance. The diagonal pattern of the stone slabs evokes both the phenomenon of geological stratification and the richly textured herringbone surface design of the building on the 77th Street side of the museum.

Upon entering the Gilder Center, visitors find themselves in the five-story Kenneth C. Griffin Exploration Atrium, a large space flooded with natural light admitted through extensive skylights. The design of the building is inspired by the ways wind and water cut through an exciting landscape to explore, as well as the shapes that hot water carves into blocks of ice.

The texture, color, and flowing shapes of Griffin's Lobby are inspired by the canyons of the American Southwest and animate the Gilder Center's grand entrance, evoking awe, excitement, and discovery. Its stunning structure was built by spraying concrete directly onto the rebar without traditional concrete pouring in a technique known as "shotcrete" i Carl Akili in the early twentieth century.

Bridges and openings in hand-crafted shotcrete connect visitors physically and visually to multiple levels that house new galleries, designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates with the museum's exhibition department, educational spaces, and collections facilities, creating welcoming lines that encourage movement throughout the building. The verticality of the Griffin Atrium foyer also serves as a key sustainability feature, bringing natural light and air circulation to the core of the building's interior.

Inevitably a flexible and dynamic renewal of the interior combined with urban renewal and changes in demographics, this new emergency medical building, while meeting medical care needs, will integrate with urban public life with an open and harmonious posture