If you’ve been wondering why this blog has been a little silent lately, it’s because the Tinkering Studio is under construction! We are building a back wall, a set of stairs leading up the a new storage space adjacent to the Tinkering Studio, and a roof above half of the space. This will allow us to have a place to store materials that will enhance the activities that we’ll offer, and will go a long way toward solving two of our main problems: sound and light. The Exploratorium is a very very loud environment, and the back of the building bounces the sounds right into our space: so by building a back wall we are hoping to cut down drastically on the amount of acoustic noise. The roof should also help with that, and allow us to install rows of overhead lights, so that we can evenly light the space.
Normally we like to build things ourselves, but this job is a little too big for us… So we enlisted the help of heroic contractors Ryan and Matt, who have been working tirelessly since Monday, and will do the job faster and much more solidly than we could have hoped to. To make sure everything is structurally sound and earthquake safe, we consulted with an engineer: as always, the job is bigger and more involved than we imagined, but we are optimistic that we’ll be done by the end of the month.
In the meantime, however, we stay open for business, albeit in a reduced footprint. Right now we’re playing with marble machines, in the fort configuration that we’ve already used a few times.
Please make a movie!!!!