Full disclosure: I love Disney.
When I was three years old, my parents took me to Disneyland for the first time. We were living in Los Angeles at the time, and it was the first and only theme park that Disney had built. The park itself was still relatively young, Mary Poppins had yet to jump into drawings (who knew then that years later she would come back to dive into the depths of bathtubs), and Disney was just beginning to think about a whole world he would build in Orlando.
From the moment I entered the park, I was captivated. At every corner and behind every curb, multiple surprises were waiting for me, arousing my curiosity, desire to try and discover what would happen. It was the perfect combination of stimulating the imagination, creativity, colors, music and especially the different stories that the park offered – all these made me feel like I was being courted, that I myself am truly important to the people who built this place. I felt they had thought of every detail especially for me, from Alice's rotating teacups, each of which had a different character, to the designed napkins in the various cafeterias. Every detail was calling me to come and be a part, just like in the song that came out years later, "Be Our Guest" in Disney's movie "Beauty and the Beast". The park and what it offered was attractive, exciting, interesting, filled with adventure and joy. So, at the age of three, my love affair with Disney began and continues to this day.
This is exactly the kind of experience that I imagined when we began, five years ago, the process of reinventing the Clore Garden of Science: building the "Disneyland" of science and mathematics: A science garden where every girl and boy can experience how we create meaningful connections between our abilities to imagine, explore, discover and understand the world and ourselves in it, in an exciting, intriguing and joyful way. In other words: A place where the participants are at the center of the experience, surrounded by science, mathematics and what we can do because of them.
Some background:
The founding of the Clore Garden of Science was led by Dr. Moshe Rishpon 25 years ago, at the Weizmann Institute and with the support of the Clore Foundation. It was built as an open-air science museum, the only one of its kind in the world. The garden dealt mainly with making Newtonian physics accessible, and quickly became a site for visitors from all over the world, won prizes and was recognized by the Ministry of Culture as one of the 4 leading science museums in Israel. The Davidson Institute ran educational programs there.
Over the years, different reasons and circumstances led to the fact that what the garden offered visitors no longer coincided with developments in science, technology, educational capabilities and cultural needs. When I arrived at Davidson, I started looking into the different options of remedy – renovation, upgrade, maybe different management; After about a year and a half, I realized that we had to choose between one of two options: either we say goodbye to the kindergarten, thank it for its wonderful years and end its path; Or we'll reinvent it. After discussions, deliberations and examinations, with the support of the Weizmann Institute's President at the time, Prof. Daniel Zajfman, the Davidson Institute's Board of Directors and the Clore Foundation, we made a brave decision: we'll reinvent the Garden of Science.
"It's going to be a singularity project in the life of the organization," Prof. Zajfman defined at the time, and he was right. It isn't simple to invent and build a science garden. At Davidson, we know very well what it takes to develop and implement educational activities in science and mathematics; Weizmann Institute scientists have an excellent understanding of their science and what it takes to succeed in scientific research; Weizmann's Construction Division teams know how to build; But none of us have a clue about design, construction and curation of interactive scientific exhibits at a high technological level, which can operate outdoors and especially can be turned by Davidson's science educators into a fascinating educational experience. I knew that when we found such experts, the great challenge would be to create ways to connect these different professional abilities with a conceptual and practical and systemic framework where visitors will feel – well, like in the Disneyland of Science: through games and surprises and activity, they will learn science and mathematics. "Out of not for its own sake, it will come for its own sake", as the Jewish proverb says.
We started searching.
When we first met, one of the first things Amir Schorr said to me, with a somewhat embarrassed smile, was, "I really love Disney". I knew the search was over. OK, OK, I admit there were other excellent reasons, such as his professionalism and creativity and experience, but a little romantic approach won't hurt any of us these days, so stay with me.
Amir and his "FastMusic ltd." team joined and led us on the journey. I can't begin to describe the significance of their leadership and the meaning of the partnership with them. Suffice to say that together with Davidson's professionals, we became a working organ with a beating heart and a thinking head of the entire project over the past five years.
All along the way, we dreamed, planned, learned from others, tested, chose, shared, debated, made mistakes, corrected, gave up, built. We set up various think tanks – for example, we had a concept committee, which worked on the leading conceptual concept; We formed disciplinary groups that delved into leading scientific content; With a group of Weizmann Institute scientists, we thought about the nature of the connections between the Weizmann and Davidson Institutes and the Garden; Together with the various construction teams and architects, we followed the development of the construction, procurement, execution -
And we also faced two huge, major crises.
Renovation works began on 15 March 2020. For those who may need a reminder, it was the eve of the first coronavirus lockdown. "This whole virus thing is a conspiracy of yours," the directors of other science museums in Israel joked with me at the time. "You knew you had to close the garden for renovation so you made sure we were all closed." Although construction work continued during the lockdown, it brought other unexpected challenges, such as shipping and transportation problems of raw materials and products, price spikes, etc.
October 7th, 2023, caught us on the last stretch of work. In addition to the chaos that we all experienced, we faced an additional situation - some of the experts who build the exhibits for us in the garden were foreign workers, who came from different countries for a specific period to build specific exhibits – and outdoors. Understandably, it wasn't in their plan to need to rush to protected spaces for shelter from missiles that were shot at us. We didn't blame them when they left before the job was done. We went on without them.
Heel to thumb, we created a garden that is the spectacular result of the partnership, creativity, enthusiasm and passion of dozens of educators, scientists, designers, illustrators, architects, landscape designers, contractors from Israel and around the world who were an inseparable part of the entire process. Details of leading figures can be found below: I thank each and every one of them for one of the most significant periods in my life, and I hope in their lives as well.
The garden offers different angles for observing the environment and ourselves in it, through many scientific activities that arouse curiosity, playfulness, discovery and enjoyment. The garden, its spaces, facilities and exhibits await visitors, literally calling them to come and touch, rotate, connect, roll, tap, explore, experiment, listen, discern and especially respond to the natural curiosity that each and every one of us has, in different and enjoyable ways; And since we are in the garden, Visitors wander among trees, smell the flowers, get wet in the water, jump in mists of clouds, feed fish, observe birds, the sky and connect in the most direct and natural way – to nature. It has nine focal points, which allow delving into each as well as combining between them. You can come and design a code that will make water jump, music play and video flash, and then change the code, find out what's going on and learn about input and output, computer codes, DNA and our responsibility to the connections between action, response and feedback; You can admire a 12-meter-high model of the human body, inflate its lungs, listen to its beating heart, climb to its head and you can even press its leg and hear it roll with laughter or shout "aye", an element that I know was added especially for me; You can get to know different properties of materials and produce different sounds from them, enjoy their flexibility and experiment with their electrical conductivity; You can step into a giant kaleidoscope and create colorful, dizzying prisms of light; It is possible to discover the properties of water (bring a change of clothes 😊) and it is possible to roll on a net between heaven and earth, experience the different forces exerted on us while observing the interactions between earth, water and heaven; And many more surprises.
Five years later, this week, we opened the garden to the entire world for the first time. This summer is a run period and we are still fine-tuning the required operating model, but I am happy to say that we built the magnificent Garden of Science that we dreamed of. There remains ongoing, central challenge: to continue to develop the perfect combination of excellent science education, imagination, creativity, thinking, experimentation and discovery in the many colors, materials, music and different stories that the garden enables. This is the challenge that will continue to face the Davidson Institute and the Weizmann Institute now and in years to come. The new Garden of Science that we built was built with the intention to make this possible.
You can easily find all the details about opening hours, special workshops and prices on the Davidson Institute website. It's suitable for everyone, as evidenced by the following amusing WhatsApp we received:
"Daniel doesn't want to go. He said the code domain was finally vacated and he was asking for a few more minutes to play there..."
Daniel is 39-years old.
I have a feeling that he, too, loves Disney.
Partners – Who's who:
Chief Curator and Project Manager: Amir Shor
Construction Project Management - Construction Division of the Weizmann Institute of Science
Planning, design and construction of the complexes and exhibits - Fast Music ltd.
Building Architects - Knafo Klimor Architects ltd.
Landscape Architects - Zur-Wolf Landscape Architects ltd.
Interior design of Lab building - Greenberg Architects ltd.
Construction Project Manager 2019-2022: Yigal Peretz; 2022-2024: Uri Aharon - BPM
Planning and building an ecological pool – Mizumi; Water Systems Design - Stark Water Engineering
Accompanying Scientists, Weizmann Institute of Science – Prof. Daniel Zajfman, Prof. Israel Bar Yosef, Prof. Barak Dayan, Dr. Nir Orion, Dr. Efrat Shema,
Fast Music Team –
Elad Cohen - Architecture of exhibits and buildings in the garden, planning and supervision of execution
Jaka Winograd - Planning exhibits and buildings in the garden
Itay Gal - Interactive Programming, Multimedia Systems and Video Design
Yoav Rosenthal - Project management and production of exhibits and complexes, music and sound design
Lior Ben Guy - Programming and Interactive Design, Interactive Video Content, Graphic Design
Ido Kagan - Creative Development, Music, Photography, Video
Noga Zajfman - Exhibit Development, Design
Tom Suissa - Graphic Design, Branding
Mishael Kraus - Development and construction of exhibits, planning
Natalie Gevirtz - writing and editing text
Dror Levy - Creative Development
Davidson Institute staff – in alphabetical order, apologies if I forgot anyone, don't hesitate to let me know and I'll humbly add:
Dr. Zvia Elgali, Dr. Yossi Elran, Dr. Oren Eckstein, Nissim Ashkenazi, Dr. Roni Ashkenazi, Dr. Hila Damari Weissler, Dr. Gabi Dorfman Furman, Anat Halperin, Ronen Har Nof, Amnon Vidan, Dr. Naama Harit-Yaari, Dr. Michal Topaz, Shiri Tal, Miri Laor Bauman, Jenny Levko Turgeman, Tamar Levy, Dr. Aurelie Lachish Zalait, Dr. Hadas Motro, Shai Mesilati, Dr. Michal Stolarsky, Vered Shapira, Etty Haramati, Yahel Atzmon, Dr. Carmit Fion, Tsameret Tsuckerman-Schwartzberg, Dr. Michal Raz-Bahat, Eran Schmitt, Dalit Shantal, Rakefet Turgeman -
And me.
Looking forward to seeing you all!
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