All Aboard!

LOS ANGELES—Tiny hands dart out to turn wheels and levers that simulate a storm. As a coyote howls a warning, flashes of lightning and thunderclaps from a noise machine punctuate the drumming of torrential rain. A great flood is coming, and children join the pairs of animals and birds converging on a newly constructed ark. They retrieve painted foam models of smaller creatures from a basket and slot them into a moving ramp that will carry them aboard. Within the soaring interior of the ark, first arrivals have found shelter and the young visitors gather in a circle to listen to a storyteller recount an alternate version of the flood myth, in which animals are carried to safety on the back of a giant turtle.

This is Noah’s Ark, a compelling mix of artistry and instructive play created by a team of architects, designers, and educators at the Skirball Cultural Center, in West Los Angeles. Located in Sepulveda Pass, three miles uphill from the Getty Center, the Skirball’s campus was designed by Moshe Safdie, the Israeli architect best known for Habitat 67, in Montreal. Noah’s Ark, which opened in June, perfectly expresses the mission of this progressive Jewish institution to build bridges between different cultures and age groups through arts and educational programs.

“It’s part of the Jewish tradition to interpret stories,” says Robert Kirschner, who is in charge of special projects at Skirball. In place of divine intervention and a patriarchal Noah, the Skirball emphasizes the universal values of community and cooperation and refers to the flood legends in almost every culture. Kirschner and his colleagues decided what they wanted to say and spent five years planning every detail of this permanent installation. Thirty architects submitted proposals, and the Seattle firm of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen was chosen for its fresh ideas, sense of whimsy, and emphasis on organic materials. “Our goal was to create an interactive experience that would engage all the senses,” says Alan Maskin, a principal at the firm, “in contrast to the pixels and brightly colored plastics that adults think children prefer.”

The project was far removed from the refined modern houses that made the firm’s reputation. Jim Olson, the founding principal, was fully involved, sketching two different sections of the ark to occupy two separate galleries. Both built of Douglas fir, the first raw and the second weathered, they evoke a great ship, with concealed mirrors to make the interiors seem much larger than they are. “It was a bit like inserting a model ship into a bottle,” Olson says. The glass bridge that links the galleries is tinted to suggest that it’s underwater. Beyond the second ark are a rainbow and a flying dove, symbols of hope and a better world. Maskin, who taught art at a day-care center before turning to architecture, knew just how to engage small children on a visceral level. He sketched 186 pairs of birds and animals, positioning them at the threshold of the arks and inside so some can be played with and others are glimpsed from afar. The scale ranges from a few inches to 15 feet high.

Brooklyn-based puppeteer Chris M. Green was commissioned to breathe life into the foreground animals and ended up creating many of them himself, using objects both everyday and exotic. An elephant made of tubular metal hoops has a papier-mache head, car mat ears, an upturned trunk of bamboo vegetable steamers, and hoofs of Thai rain drums (which are embossed with elephants). Zebras are crafted from rotating roof ventilators with manes made of piano keys. A crocodile has a body formed from a violin case and a tire tread, teeth made of eyedroppers, and a long tongue made from the violin’s neck. Two giraffes, one made of pottery shards, the other a head mounted on a crane, can swivel their necks. A hedgehog of surgical tubing complements an anaconda composed of couch springs, an owl with fans for wings and tail, and a battered boxing-glove kiwi bird with paintbrush feet. Green also constructed the 17 puppets. A flamingo with a long neck made from spools of pink thread, bamboo legs, and flyswatter feet requires several pairs of expert hands to animate it. It brings to mind Picasso’s bull’s head sculpted from the saddle and handlebars of a bicycle.