Cleveland Museum of Natural History Transformation Project
Cleveland, Ohio
Over the past decade the Cleveland Museum of Natural History has been engaged in a multi-million dollar transformation of its campus in the University Circle neighborhood of Cleveland. Pashek+MTR was commissioned by the Museum to design the landscape within and surrounding the Museum complex, including the Smith Environmental Courtyard, the Museum’s main entrance, and a new Welcome Garden that turned a former parking lot into a new public park. Implemented alongside a full building renovation and a new cafe and gallery addition, the Museum landscapes demonstrate its science- and sustainability-driven mission. The project achieved LEED Platinum certification.
As described in an April 2024 New York Times’ article about the project, “Beyond the limestone shelves — where once stood a parking lot — the museum’s two-acre grounds have now been landscaped into a prairie of native Ohio grasses and plants, thus completing the symbolic links between the natural evolution of Northeastern Ohio and the one interpreted inside the natural history museum. The museum’s lawn now forms a kind of moraine from the receding glacier, which is depicted through the layers of stone and the glacier-inspired design of the museum itself. The innovative new design and exhibit halls are, museum officials said, a template for a new kind of natural history museum — one that features more interactive, locally relevant and community-engaging exhibits and programming.”
In addition to landscape architecture, Pashek+MTR developed interpretive messages and sign content for the Courtyard and Welcome Garden regarding sustainable site design features such as native plants and pollinators, rain garden plants and hydrology, and geological features of Northeast Ohio.
