Public Market in Emeryville Unveils First Outdoor East Bay Exhibits from the Exploratorium

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, developer TMG Partners, in conjunction with the City of Emeryville, unveiled a unique place for Bay Area residents to play and learn as officials cut the ribbon on new permanent exhibits from the Exploratorium at the Public Market in Emeryville. Woven throughout the outdoor walkways and plazas of this popular shopping, dining and work destination, the Exploratorium’s hands-on science displays represent the world-renowned museum’s first outdoor presence in the East Bay. Public Market recently sold to City Center Realty Partners/Angelo Gordon who are working with TMG to continue to create a unique mixed-use community at Public Market.

“What TMG has created here is powerful. By demonstrating sustainable best practices including solar car-ports that fuel electric-vehicle charging stations, recycling, car-sharing, and sustainable landscaping, the Public Market’s Green Living Room will inspire others throughout the State for decades”

The Exploratorium’s exhibition is a key feature of the Public Market's “Green Living Room,” an artful, interactive living park that will engage the Public Market’s 3,000+ daily visitors to discover how the latest in green design and management revitalized this private, mixed-use project. The Green Living Room was funded in part by a $1.35 Million California Catalyst Communities Grant to model sustainability best practices state-wide.

"The Exploratorium is thrilled to join the Public Market Emeryville,” Exploratorium Executive Director Dennis Bartels said. “Our participation in the Green Living Room is a great example of ‘place-making,’ with exhibits chosen to help the public notice the specific wind patterns or different sediment characteristics of the bay, among other natural phenomena. This collaboration is the work of Exploratorium Global Studios®, which places our exhibits in all kinds of venues around the world. After all, science happens everywhere.”

The museum’s exhibits reflect Emeryville’s bay-front environment, drawing on phenomena as varied as wind patterns, visual perception and bay sediment. The Exploratorium displays are the culmination of a green renovation that TMG undertook to transform the 14-acre mixed use Public Market site into a model of eco-friendly living. Home to retail, office, a forthcoming residential project and well known for its ethnic restaurants, the Public Market is a well-established gathering place that reflects the diversity of the Bay Area.

"We’re delighted that these new exhibits are permanent attractions in our city, here for generations to come, explaining environmental science and the Public Market site’s natural history," said Patrick O’Keeffe, Emeryville City Manager.

“What TMG has created here is powerful. By demonstrating sustainable best practices including solar car-ports that fuel electric-vehicle charging stations, recycling, car-sharing, and sustainable landscaping, the Public Market’s Green Living Room will inspire others throughout the State for decades,” explained California State Assembly Member Nancy Skinner who represents the 14^th Assembly District including Emeryville.

“TMG is proud to have created a partnership with San Francisco’s Exploratorium, the best scientific ‘explainer’ in the business, to provide a hands-on, fun experience of what it means to interact with the natural and the built environments,” noted Michael Covarrubias, Chairman and CEO of TMG.

The Exploratorium closed its facility in San Francisco’s Marina district to relocate to its new waterfront home on San Francisco’s Pier 15 on January 2. The new site, which opens on April 17, will feature over 2 acres of outdoor exhibits for the first time. The partnership with Public Market Emeryville is an extension of the Exploratorium’s educational mission, bringing its participatory learning directly to communities.

Exploratorium “Explainers,” teens who help guide participants, were on-hand at today’s ceremony while dozens of people played with the Public Market’s new exhibits, designed by the Exploratorium’s Outdoor Team, and which include:

Lift
Drawing on the aerodynamics of bird flight and the rigging technology used in sailboat design, Lift is comprised of sets of wing-like airfoils that move up and down vertical cables. The airfoils on the cables rise and fall according to wind speed. The result is a kind of “aerograph,” a device that graphs how the speed of the wind changes across a horizontal distance.
Anamorphic Bench
A playful exhibit that incorporates concepts of light, geometry, and human perception of both. A specially designed, semi-circular bench is reflected in a cylindrical mirror. In the reflection, this interestingly designed bench amazingly appears to be perfectly rectangular. This radial distortion also creates a seating arrangement that reorients the viewer towards other seated viewers, encouraging conversation, noticing, and sharing of ideas.
Outdoor Signposts
A series of five outdoor signposts installed to encourage visitors to observe recycled materials, architectural elements, wear patterns and any number of man-made or naturally-occurring artifacts or phenomenon at the Public Market location.
Bay Windows
Visitors spin disks filled with samples of bay mud, sand and sediment. The glowing color or quick settling of materials will be both beautiful and telling as visitors explore the movement and settling characteristics of bay sediment. Three Bay Windows will be installed, each with a different sediment mixture. The materials in each will be visually distinguished and together form a triptych of ocean sediments and tell an important local and regional story.

The Public Market is part of a 14-acre mixed-use site planned with approvals to build up to 1,000,000 square feet of new housing and mixed-use, infill transit oriented development over the next 20 years. Public Market was awarded in 2008 the first-ever Platinum designation from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) rating system, and it aims to be a model of walkable, green urban living.

About Public Market Emeryville
For more information, visit publicmarketemeryville.com

About the Exploratorium
For more information, visit http://www.exploratorium.edu/

About TMG Partners
For more information, visit www.tmgpartners.com

About City Center Realty Partners
For more information, visit www.ccrpllc.com/

About Angelo Gordon
Angelo, Gordon & Co. is a privately-held registered investment advisor dedicated to alternative investing. The firm was founded in 1988 and currently manages approximately $25 billion.