Roto, a leading planning & design-build firm, is celebrating the opening of Discovery World on Market – the first dedicated children’s museum in the Mid-Ohio Valley.
This new attraction in Parkersburg, West Virginia opened on 2 April 2023 and is located in a converted Masonic Temple. Galleries, a cafe and office spaces are arranged within 13,000 square feet over three floors in this historic building, which was originally built in 1915.
Wendy Shriver, executive director at Discovery World on Market, says: “We are so very excited to welcome families to this new community gathering space and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) learning resource – the first of its kind in the area. We look forward to sparking imaginations while children play on these three floors of discovery.”
Roto has created a series of experiences for children from toddlers to eight years old, all of which reference the local community.
Inspiring STEAM activities
Spaces include The Ball Factory, which is a 19-foot tall climbing frame and interactive play feature inspired by manufacturing in the local area. Children are encouraged to work together to collect colourful balls which they place into vacuum tubes which shoot the balls into the main tower.
When the children have collected 250 balls, they are released from the Ball Factory’s tower and showered down on the visitors below.
The River Adventure interactive display offers visitors the opportunity to experiment with water power – using two 200-gallon water tables. Roto has combined open-ended play and examples from the local area to create repeatable STEAM and imaginative play activities.
Visitors can interact with wildlife in the Riverbank Creatures Immersive Digital Space. In this digital gallery, they can curate their own audio-visual experience inspired by plants and animals of the Ohio River. Visitors can press buttons to activate different digital creatures – each with its own action and rhythmic sounds. By pressing multiple buttons visitors can create their own harmonious soundscape.
Up on the third floor, guests can get hands-on in the Design Studio. A wide variety of resources are provided so that they can try making techniques and test ideas – encouraging experimentation, design-thinking and creativity.
A fun and unique project
The project has taken four years to complete (with a short break due to COVID-19) and cost $12.8m.
Caroline Petitti, principal and design director at Roto, says: “Partnering with Discovery World to create these wonderful play spaces and recreate the Ohio River made this such a fun and unique project. So many elements are directly inspired by the Parkersburg community. We look forward to visitors seeing a bit of themselves and their town in the experiences as they’re having fun designing cars, building rockets, and also learning important STEAM concepts while they play.”
Roto CEO Joseph Wisne recently spoke to blooloop about trends for 2023, focussing on “supersensory” exhibition experiences which push the limits and enhance expectations around immersive media experiences.
