Renowned architect Moshe Safdie remembers Exploration Place as ‘a seminal project’

World-renowned architect Moshe Safdie probably could be forgiven if he didn’t remember many details of his time in Wichita designing Exploration Place two decades ago.

After all, the 82-year-old has gone on to do acclaimed, massive international projects in many more exotic places, such as Singapore’s Jewel Changi Airport and its Marina Bay Sands development, Brazil’s Albert Einstein Education and Research Center and Israel’s Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center.

Still, Safdie not only has what he called vivid memories of his time in Wichita, he regularly checks back on Exploration Place.

“I’ve been in touch continuously,” Safdie said. “It’s like a family with our old clients and projects.”

Exploration Place’s $62 million cost, $27 million of which was for Safdie’s work, is infinitesimal compared to his other projects. Still, Safdie said Exploration Place is special.

“It was a seminal project for our practice in many ways.”

It was the first work in the middle of the United States for Safdie, a native of Israel who has citizenship there, in Canada and the United States, where he has had his main office in Boston for decades.

Also, Safdie said he committed “extraordinary energy in developing a concept” of a geometric pattern in the shape of a torus — think the shape of a doughnut — for the building’s silhouette.

It “didn’t come easy at the beginning.”

Once Safdie mastered how he wanted to use the toroid, he said “that kind of generated the whole design almost mathematically.”

The roof shape and structure of the children’s science center and museum was purposefully geometric, Safdie said. “I thought it should have that sense of the scientific.”

Along with a planned visit from Safdie this spring to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Exploration Place’s 2000 opening, the toroid concept was going to be central to the celebration with an edible wall of 2,020 doughnuts.

“What we were planning to do is sort of translate this concept into something everyone can understand,” said Adam Smith, the center’s president of 10 months. “We wanted to break a world record, and we had everything lined up.”

Safdie said if that would have helped children understand geometry, he’d be in favor of it, though he would mix in some bagels with the doughnuts.

Regardless, the pandemic forced a complete cancellation. This week, there will be a belated, abbreviated celebration with a couple of virtual events for donors, architects and people in the construction industry to hear Safdie speak.

Safdie said he’d like to return in person another time. Smith is buoyed to hear it, though he isn’t sure the doughnut wall will ever happen.

“It’s going to be a while, really, before people are comfortable eating off of a giant buffet.”

Safdie’s Wichita breakthrough

Doughnuts and bagels aside, Safdie is still celebrating the toroids he incorporated into Exploration Place.

“Exploration Place was a breakthrough,” he said.

“That idea was very powerful. In fact, it was an idea that went on to be applied to other projects as a methodology.”

A lot of Kansans have visited another nearby building where Safdie took the concept to more complex heights: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.

While that Alice Walton-led project may be grandiose compared to Exploration Place, in some ways, Wichita’s achievement is even more stunning.

“The building committee was very ambitious,” Safdie said.

Bill Lacy, who at the time was executive director of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, served as an advisor to help secure an architect. Safdie was hardly the only major contender. There were architects — a “dream list,” Safdie said — such as Frank Gehry and Norman Foster among others.

“It’s actually mind-boggling,” Safdie said. “You rarely get these heavy hitters in one list.”

He arrived early to Wichita and walked Exploration Place’s future grounds before his interview.

“I was very deeply disappointed when I got to it because it was billed . . . as a riverfront site,” Safdie said. “In fact, when I stood on the site, I couldn’t even see the river.”

He told the search committee that he walked the shoreline of the Arkansas River and then “felt like I was in the magical point.”

“Your museum should be in the magic point, and your site should be on the water,” Safdie told the committee.

He suggested rerouting McLean Boulevard.

“That, as I think back, was a very gutsy position to take.”

He said the committee was intrigued and the City Council and Mayor Elma Broadfoot were receptive. Some others were not, but Safdie said he already was well versed in political battles from projects in Canada and Israel. He said he was elated that the rerouting happened and he was selected, which he thinks was in part because of his idea.

Even if he hadn’t been chosen, Safdie said, “The board should be appreciated for having produced . . . a landmark building architecturally for the city.”

He said any of the architects interviewed would have created a substantial work, and he said that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

“There aren’t that many ambitious undertakings that come out with good results like that.”

Safdie said 19th century architect Louis Sullivan used to say, “No great buildings occur without great clients.”

In addition to the idea of rerouting McLean, Safdie also suggested creating an island for the museum to partly be in the river so visitors could experience its presence and flow. He said committee members laughed because there once had been an island there: tiny Ackerman Island, home to Wonderland Park.

The Exploration Place committee approved Safdie’s design, which called for part of the center to be on the banks of the river in one building connected by a walkway to a second building on the river.

Though Safdie said it’s fundamental to any design to first consider the land on which a building will sit, he said Exploration Place reinforced that conviction for him.

“Half the way to victory in developing a design is to decipher the secrets to the site.”

National Register stewardship

Despite Safdie’s lasting feelings for Exploration Place, at one point he became frustrated and concerned about the building. After the center’s founding president left, Safdie did not appreciate the direction in which new president Al Meloni took the building, particularly regarding its maintenance.

One of Exploration Place’s founders invited Safdie back for an assessment and to return some features to their original forms.

Smith said his predecessor, Jan Luth, “started to manage the property knowing that we are stewards of an important, historic building.” He said he would be stunned if it’s not added to the National Register of Historic Places when it becomes eligible.

Although Exploration Place technically does not have an obligation to maintain the building as a historic one, Smith said, “That’s exactly what we’re doing.”

In conjunction with Safdie’s office, the board has adopted a document that spells out how Exploration Place must preserve sight lines and other features of the building.

In his new role, Smith has been walking Exploration Place’s grounds with others to imagine its next incarnation. He’s in the early stages of a strategic planning exercise for what he calls the next generation of development.

Safdie had already created some sketches — not full plans — for where a third building could go. (Exploration Place currently has an exhibit on the drawings Safdie used to create the center.)

Smith said he needs to assess if the time is right to build again. If it happens, it will be for an expanded education center.

While Exploration Place is probably one of Wichita’s most-photographed buildings, “and rightly so,” Smith said, he added that “it also works on the inside.” Smith said that’s not always the case, even with architects who create stunning exteriors.

At Exploration Place, Smith said it’s “a pleasure to program inside of it.”

Safdie said the toroid design “also made the building much more efficient.”

He said his decision to build with concrete and wood also provided sustainability, support and — from the timber — warmth.

Upon reflection, Safdie said he sometimes wishes he might have changed a feature or two in buildings he creates, but at Exploration Place, he said, “Nothing would have changed.” Except, he said, “I could say I would change the maintenance practices.”

Except for the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Mo., Safdie hasn’t done any other Kansas projects since Exploration Place.

Would Wichita dare to dream as big as another Moshe Safdie design, perhaps with the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan as a companion piece to Exploration Place?

Safdie could be available. He still works about 50 hours a week. He’s currently involved with what he calls a few “major projects” in Singapore and has zero plans to ever retire.

“I’m just having so much fun. Why would I want to?”

This story was originally published October 8, 2020 at 4:47 AM.