Children's museum is latest element in timber town's cultural revival

The US city of Eau Claire was built with timber. Handsome profits from logging and sawmilling fuelled the rise of this Wisconsin community in the mid-1800s, earning the city the nickname ‘Sawdust City’. Eau Claire was a boom town until the lumber industry collapsed in the early 20th century.

Today, trees are again playing a role – albeit small – in energising Eau Claire’s economy. Walk north along Barstow Street, the main drag in this city of 70,000 residents, and you’ll eventually reach the Children’s Museum of Eau Claire. The two-storey structure, which opened last year, is immediately recognisable due to its turret, porthole windows and a facade clad in precast concrete panels, etched to resemble tree bark. Step inside and you’ll encounter a forest of ash, sugar maple and Douglas fir, whose trunks and branches form the building's interior supports.

The new museum is part of a larger public-private effort to remake Eau Claire as an arts and culture destination. In 2019, the city welcomed the opening of Pablo Center, a 12,500m² performing arts venue on a downtown parcel that overlooks the confluence of the Chippewa and Eau Claire rivers. The structure, designed by New York-based practice Steinberg Hart, features a 1,200-seat performance hall, art galleries and gathering spaces, and has been the catalyst for several new developments throughout the city, including hotels, restaurants, coffee shops and a natural foods co-operative. 

The new venue for the Children’s Museum of Eau Claire is the latest addition to this host of attractions devoted to stimulating the local economy – and the effort seems to be working. Last year, it attracted 116,884 visitors and generated an estimated $5.3 million.

The Children’s Museum of Eau Claire was founded over a decade ago in a vacated downtown storefront. Attracting visitors and residents from around the region, it proved a community asset and quickly reached capacity. Eyeing expansion, museum leaders approached the city about building a replacement facility, and acquired an empty downtown parcel just north of the Eau Claire River. After Pablo Center opened, the museum’s executive director approached its lead designer, Steinberg Hart principal Malcolm Holzman, about designing the new museum.

Holzman has been involved in a wide variety of cultural projects over his career, including the Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis (1974) and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum (1975) both as a partner in Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates. He was intrigued. ‘They wanted to do something as exciting and iconic design-wise as the Pablo Center,’ he recalls. ‘They wanted a facility that could help drive the local economy.’

The design team scheduled a series of charettes to engage the community in discussions and activities that would surface ideas. Perhaps not surprisingly, play was a recurring theme in such conversations, often yielding whimsical concepts. Could, for example, the building be modelled on a wedge of cheese, Wisconsin’s most famous export? Several participants, however, suggested referencing the resource that grew the town: trees. A few months later, Holzman was attending a conference in nearby Madison, the state capitol, and happened upon a vendor, Wisconsin-based WholeTrees, marketing pre-engineered wood components made from unmilled, renewably sourced timbers. It seemed just the kind of material Holzman was looking for.

Flexibility is key in museum design. Spaces must be adaptable to accommodate new exhibits and future programming changes. Core-and-shell construction is often well-suited because it provides an empty canvas – put up the building, then add exhibits. Holzman’s team saw several benefits in relying on the method but they also wanted to give the new 2,250m² museum some panache.

The otherwise-square floorplan is energised with a broadly rounded corner, filled floor to ceiling with glass. Having been scanned to understand both their geometries and structural usability, whole trees were used as columns, while round timbers serve as joists and girder trusses. Structural elements are often hidden in core and shell but, in this instance, they are left exposed. Through this visibility, the interior foregrounds the importance of ecological sustainability and encourages a connection to the natural world.

Children, of course, are the focus of the facility. On a typical day, kids and parents can be found exploring a child-sized city, a water-play exhibit, a toddler forest and a fitness and nutrition gallery. A maker space filled with materials, glue, paint and more invites craft experiments. Many elements are designed especially for children, for instance, lower sinks in the bathrooms and a second lower railing on the stair leading to the second floor. Considerations for special populations include an elevator for individuals with mobility challenges and a quiet room for kids who need a temporary respite from noise and light due to sensory issues.

The museum’s carbon-neutral design also incorporates several sustainability measures. Materials were prefabricated off-site and modular components used for ease of assembly. Many were recycled or locally sourced, from the round timbers provided by WholeTrees (including ash trees that had been infected with emerald ash borer and salvaged from a park in Sheboygan, Wisconsin) to the precast concrete panels with high-performance insulation used on the building’s exterior (made by a regional company). Passive design maximises daylighting and solar heating (vital during harsh Mid-west winters), and 224 roof-mounted solar panels and 21 geothermal wells beneath the facility generate heat and power for the museum. Low-flow toilets, water-efficient faucets and sensor-activated fixtures help conserve water.

Equally notable, however, is the building’s impact on the community. The facility provides a low-cost entertainment option for local families who want to get out of the house. A reserved space within the museum is also dedicated to a separately run child daycare operation – an amenity that’s often difficult to find in smaller communities. After hours, many spaces can be reconfigured to hold public and private events, from birthday parties to concerts, that attract adults. And the facility’s impact on the local economy and civic pride is undisputed.

Museum design can be challenging – you don’t want the building to overshadow or hamstring the activity that goes on inside. But Holzman says he’s pleased with how the end product balances organisational programming and architectural design. ‘We really wanted the architecture to play a big part in the experience of the museum – with the trees, the views, the daylighting and the bright colours,’ he says. ‘We wanted the building itself to be as exciting, compelling and delightful as the exhibits.’

Joel Hoekstra is a writer and consultant based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In numbers
Usable interior space 23,382 square feet
Exterior space 2,200 square feet
Construction cost $8,700,000
PV rooftop panels 224
Geothermal wells 21