History of Development

Stans Museum of Life and the Environment

CHF | Land Features | Support | Building Green | First of Its Kind | Plans

In 1997, the Culture & Heritage Museums (CHM) began an intensive campaign to gather local and regional community input on concepts for new educational content based on a unique interpretive theme that would be embodied in a new museum facility. 

It was envisioned that CHM would employ its core collections in new exhibitions in an inter-disciplinary fashion to reveal the connections between people and place by exploring the relationship between cultural and natural history. 

Community Input

CHM conducted a series of meetings with individuals, groups, and the public at large through workshops, presentations to civic groups and governmental agencies, public events, advisory committees, and interviews to test its evolving concepts about this new direction.  Media coverage for its emerging plans stimulated public opinion about desired educational and recreational opportunities related to the project.

Culture & Heritage Foundation Formed

In 1998 CHM formed its supporting Culture and Heritage Foundation to raise, invest, and manage endowment and capital funds for CHM.  Later that year the Foundation received an extraordinary gift of 400-acres of land from Jane McColl a Charlotte, North Carolina civic leader whose family had deep roots in York County.  The land, valued at $8.5 million at the time, bordered the Catawba River adjacent to I-77, a principal transportation corridor through the Charlotte region.  back to top>>

Features of the Donated Land

The land encompasses several features that would complement CHM’s emerging interpretive plans.  These include its mile long frontage on the river (the Catawba River valley is the watershed for the Charlotte region), and colonies of endangered Schweinitz’s sunflowers and important cultural threads.  Archaeology revealed Native American fish weirs and a possible village site, post-contact settlement sites and a water-driven mill, and gold mining pits dating to the early 19th century.  Even the power lines crossing the property reflect an important cultural theme related to electrification and the rise of the textile industry that dominated regional socioeconomic for most of the 20th century.  back to top>>

Campaign for a Deeper Understanding Begins

With the land and concepts about a theme to connect cultural and natural history in hand, CHM approached the York County Council with a vision for the future that included a new museum and improvements to its other sites: Historic Brattonsville and the McCelvey Center.  In June 2000, York County pledged $8 million in support of CHM’s plans based on their strong potential to impact area quality of life through substantially enhanced educational services and economic development. 

CHM’s governing Culture and Heritage Commission adopted a goal within its October 2000 strategic plan to create and/or renovate our facilities (including a new museum) to be adequate to meet its mission and serve its communities.  In February 2001 CHM engaged Lord Cultural Resources Planning and Management to assess its overall strategic vision and plans for programs and facilities expansion.  The Lord Group study concurred with assumptions about how the CHM’s emerging people and pace theme would differentiate the organization’s learning opportunities within the region but it recommended that CHM clarify further its new museum’s interpretive ideas before they projected its performance in serving the mission and communities.

“In nature, there is no such thing as waste; one species’ waste is another species’ food.” William McDonough, Architect back to top>>

Building a "Green" Museum Site

As CHM realized its emerging themes for the new museum had environmental undertones, it determined the facility should be a “green” building.  In May 2001 CHM engaged one of the nation’s foremost green design architects, William McDonough + Partners, to advise on defining the purpose of the new museum and integrating sustainable principles into its interpretive content.  As an aspect of this phase McDonough devised a set of institutional values to guide concepts for a sustainable museum that were subsequently adopted by CHM:  

• All species are intertwined and create the web of life
• The concept of waste does not exist in ecological systems
• To create a viable community we must become indigenous to our place
• An understanding of energy flows will guide design
• Water is a primary source of life

In October 2001 CHM hired the McDonough firm, exhibition designer Ralph Appelbaum Associates, and Nelson-Byrd-Woltz Landscape Architects, to conceptualize how these values would impact designs for the new museum.  In May 2002, design concepts for the new Stans Museum of Life and the Environment (MLE) were shared in a series of public forums and the Lord group performed its final study and made projections that the new Museum would attract hundreds of thousands of visitors each year – vastly increasing CHM’s educational reach.

First of Its Kind

Working with CHM staff the architecture, exhibition, and landscape architecture design team conceived MLE to be the first museum of its kind – demonstrating the interconnectedness of living systems and their environment by revealing the story of the intersection of people and place in the Carolina Piedmont and other regions in the nation and world.  MLE, its grounds, core exhibitions, and surrounding site will all reinforce its underlying themes to promote a new level of understanding of, and hope for, a sustainable future.  Its educational mission would be met through its key design objectives to: 

• Demonstrate the interconnectedness of the web of life and earth systems
• Explore the impact of the natural environment on people, and of people on the natural environment – in the past, present, and future – in the Carolina Piedmont and other regions of the world
• Explain how humans adapt to each other, other species, and their environment through behaviors of their choosing; thus human choices have ramifications for the sustenance of all life
• Dramatize and enhance the museum’s unique site to focus on the Catawba River in shaping the environmental history of the Carolina Piedmont
• Create an indoor/outdoor walking patch for visitors to explore unexpected views and perspectives on the intersection of people and place
• Utilize renewable energy sources to demonstrate the fundamental principal that 99.9% of life on earth is sustainedby energy from the sun
• Provide a forum for scholars and policy makers, historians, scientists, and the public to explore the new and exciting field of environmental history and share the latest thinking on some of the most important issues of our time related to ecology, environmentalism, and sustainability
• Reinforce ‘sustaining’ human practices and ways of life whichpromote a positive relationship to the planet and its life support systems

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MLE Plans

As planned now MLE will encompass 110,000 square feet on two floors with mezzanines.  Its core people and place exhibition, Common Ground, will comprise 35,000 square feet.  Its architectural design is based on the cycle of life, illustrating the interconnectedness of the environment and those that inhabit it. The Museum will employ hands-on interactive devices and contemporary information technology, as well as traditional museum components such as dioramas and displays of objects and artifacts to make its learning opportunities accessible for all ages.  It will include state-of-the-art facilities for lectures, symposia and town hall-style meetings, special events, openings and celebrations – all endeavors giving voice to the many perspectives that have shaped the region’s history. Amenities will include classrooms and laboratories, a digital information center, space for temporary galleries and special events, auditorium, café, and store, among others.     

The facility and its surrounding grounds will be constructed and operated according to the United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) guidelines.  Key LEED related concepts to be explored in the next phase of planning include:

1. Building placement and orientation including the interweaving of building with existing proposed location (a bluff overlooking the Catawba River) to improve energy performance and optimize views
2. Optimizing daylight through orientation and strategic fenestration to improve interior light quality (and associated visitor and staff experience) and reduce energy costs – while providing adequate protection for museum collections
3. Integration of building and landscape to demonstrate respect for existing environment, including major trees on riverbank
4. The use of planted roofs as habitat for native grasses and endangered sunflowers, storm water retention, superior insulation and maintenance
5. Management of storm water in relation to existing drainage patterns to river, use of porous paving, minimization of topographical impact, and vegetated filtration
6. Water banking for irrigation using storm water
7. Strategic structural designs and the use of materials and components to avoid undue impact on site during construction
8. Radiant heating and cooling that are low-energy, low-maintenance, highly efficient and quiet
9. Low-impact plumbing systems
10. Coordination of building systems through advanced control systems for lighting and HVAC coordinated with outdoor conditions to avoid unnecessary energy use
11. Use of healthful materials and finishes throughout
12. Resource efficiency including use of local sources, recycled materials, etc.
13. Photovoltaic arrays and wind turbine farms to generate electricity on-site. back to top>>

“Once you start pulling at something in Nature, you find that it’s hitched to everything in the universe.”  John Muir, Sierra Club Founder

Downloads
> MLE Concepts (.pdf)

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Downloads
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