Blue Jay Environmental Education Center
project type: fabrication , graphics , museums
Blue Jay Point on Falls Lake is one of Wake County’s most popular park facilities. The park site provides camping, fishing, boating, hiking, and staff-led nature activities. The visitors center building contains three distinct exhibit areas as well as the park offices, classrooms, and a special children’s activity area. For budgetary reasons, the overall project was divided into three development/fabrication phases.
Phase I
The park’s proximity to Falls Lake, the source of the Neuse River, led to the selection of water awareness as an overall theme for Phase I, with conservation and environmental quality as reinforcing issues. Visitors first encounter a topographical map of the Neuse River basin that shows most tributaries between the headwaters of the Neuse near Roxboro and the area where the Neuse empties into the Pamlico Sound. Major cities are identified on the map to emphasize that what we do in our city affects those who live downstream.
Other exhibits in the lobby discuss Falls Lake’s importance as a water source for the Triangle area. Visitors experience the steps in the water treatment process in an exhibit entitled “From the Lake to the Tap.” It begins with water drawn from the lake, details the treatment steps, and ends with a drinking fountain from which visitors can sample the results of the purification process. In addition to the exhibits, Design Dimension worked with the park staff to develop the atmosphere of the interior spaces. Large, semitransparent banners printed with bold animal silhouettes are hung from the high cathedral ceiling in the lobby, and a line of clerestory windows illuminates the banners and exhibits with diffused natural light. Daylighting, combined with natural finished wood and the color palette of pastel blues, aquas, and greens, gives the exhibit space a bright and airy appearance.
Phase II
The exhibit space for Phase II of the Environmental Education Center at Blue Jay Point County Park is a long, narrow hallway that leads visitors from the lobby (Phase I) to the main exhibit room (Phase III). The hallway is lined with shallow alcoves and punctuated halfway down its length by a lightwell with skylights.
The Phase II exhibits focus on how our lifestyles and choices affect the planet. The “green” content of the exhibits is reinforced by the materials used in their construction� a backdrop of plastic lumber made from recycled milk jugs and soda bottles supports the exhibits, reused street signs have become graphic panels, and kiln-dried trees felled by Hurricane Fran serve as major design elements.
The recycling and reclamation processes that convert “trash” to consumer products are illustrated graphically in the “Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling” alcove. Another alcove uses an interactive model of a house to educate visitors about energy efficient choices at home, and additional exhibits on “Green Consumerism”, “Current Environmental Events”, “Biodiversity”, and “The Growth of a Community” feature hands-on interactive components to emphasize their message.
In the upper story of the hall, stylized birds appear to dart and swoop past birdhouses (made from wood scraps by a local girl scout troop) which perch above each alcove on the kiln-dried trees. The birds and birdhouses serve as a teaser for the site-specific investigation of Blue Jay Point’s ecosystem that takes place in the Nature Discovery Room (Phase III).
Phase III
This project, titled the “Nature Discovery Room”, represents the third and final phase of exhibit design/fabrication for the Blue Jay Environmental Center. As the name implies, the exhibits examine the “hidden” aspects of the natural environment in the park�s three distinct habitats (forest, stream, and field).
The room was divided roughly into three sections, one for each habitat. Each section contains an oversize photograph of the specific habitat with portions of the image highlighted where the visitor might “discover” hidden wildlife. Each section also has a series of interactive exhibits on a discovery desk that interprets various aspects of that habitat. The exhibits encourage the visitor to go into the park and explore the natural environment by looking for “hidden” micro-habitats.
A separate portion of the “Nature Discovery Room” explores the Birds of Blue Jay. This exploration is facilitated through a series of interactive exhibits that examine migration patterns, bird markings, silhouette identification, bird calls, nest identification, male/female bird plumage comparisons, etc. Several pairs of binoculars and a log book, located on a rail below large windows, encourage the visitor to identify and record birds nesting and/or feeding near the center.
A portable exhibit, fabricated as a discovery desk on wheels, explores various aspects of animal locomotion. Flip-books and a zoetrope depict, through multiple images shown in rapid sequence, a fish swimming, a bird flying, a dog walking, a horse galloping, and a variety of human movements. The desk has also been designed with a template, blank strips of paper, and graphic instructions that encourage the visitor to make their own series of images for viewing in the zoetrope.
Additional exhibits interpret old field secession typical of the piedmont landscape, and compare evergreen and deciduous species common to the park.