Creating the Ultimate Museum Experience for Sports Fans: Corian® Helps Bring Design Inspiration to Life

A Super Stadium for the Ultimate Football Experience

When the sports architecture team from HNTB, an internationally renowned architectural firm, was selected in 2006 as the designer for the new Levi’s® Stadium, it was tasked with designing a stadium that would embody the three pillars of the San Francisco 49ers’ vision: fan experience, sustainability and technology. Today, Levi’s® Stadium is the model for a new generation of outdoor entertainment venues. Levi’s® Stadium has been praised for its excellent sightlines, beautiful architecture, plentiful amenities, technological advancements, convenient public transportation access, and environmental sustenance. 

Featuring 11 unique gallery and exhibit spaces, the 49ers Museum presented by Sony is a 20,000 sq. ft. facility dedicated to the 49ers past, present and future.

Corian® – Key Player in Architecture of State of the Art Sports Museum

Featuring 11 unique gallery and exhibit spaces, the 49ers Museum presented by Sony is a 20,000 square foot facility dedicated to the 49ers past, present and future. The Museum is dedicated to its values of education, innovation and heritage and is committed to serving as an exciting, engaging home for fans of all ages.

Cambridge Seven Associates (C7A) designed the interior architecture and exhibits for the new San Francisco 49ers Museum to celebrate the outstanding achievements and legacy of this important NFL dynasty. Located inside Levi’s® Stadium, the facility is a museum in motion with 14 interactive exhibits and 10 -film and audio experiences produced by Cortina Productions in collaboration with The Taylor Group. The 49ers Museum takes visitors on a dynamicinteractive journey where they can wander among life-sized statues of honored members and use interactive kiosks to read stats and biographies of the great 49ers players, including Jerry Rice, Steve Young, and Joe Montana. As visitors continue through the Team Gallery and Bill Walsh’s O-ffice, they encounter the Heritage Gallery spiral, which features a timeline of brilliant 49ers moments through the decades. From there, visitors experience the excitement of being “In the Game” as they simulate passing, receiving, blocking
and practice their agility as part of a virtual football game. The journey culminates with five Lombardi trophies in a gallery celebrating the city the team calls home, San Francisco.

Design Inspiration Brought to Life by Corian®

C7A drew inspiration for the San Francisco 49ers Museum from "The Catch" (Joe Montana’s famous throw), which is featured prominently in the spirals and curved walls of the 20,000-square-foot space. Combining artifacts and memorabilia, with augmented reality, interactive games, and projected videos and imagery, the museum uses technology to put visitors inside one of the greatest moments in sports history.

Flowing, virtually seamless, organic shapes, bold effects of color and translucency — that’s what was imagined for the Museum exhibit space. And that’s what the exhibit designers at The Taylor Group and the fabricators at Ontario Construction Industries (OCI) created with Corian®. Corian®, with its seamless beauty and durability, is the solid surface material specified by C7A to be used throughout the museum and Education Center. All the curved walls, displays, reader rails, desks and wall cladding are made of Corian® Glacier White.

And in a unique education initiative, the Denise DeBartolo York Education Center was started in the Museum as a learning lab for STEM education that uses multi-touch, object recognition tables made of Corian® to embrace the values of core curriculum in a uniquely engaging and memorable way.

Inspiration for the San Francisco 49ers Museum from "The Catch" (Joe Montana’s famous throw), which is featured prominently in the spirals and curved walls of the 20,000-square-foot space.

Corian® – A Workable Material Scores on Consistent Quality & Durability

More than 250 sheets of Corian® Glacier White helped achieve the vision for the Museum exhibits. Since Corian® is an extremely workable material, it can be formed into virtually any shape or design through
thermoforming, CNC-routing or sandblasting and can be textured or polished to develop the unique styles
and finishes the design and fabrication teams required. The curved walls and unique display stands of thermoformed Corian® also provide the uniform, seamless look needed on which to project the 49ers
images in the many film and interactive exhibit spaces throughout the Museum.

Working together on site, the OCI fabrication/installation team and The Taylor Group exhibit team found new ways to bond panels and strips of Corian® to maintain consistent color and seamlessness throughout the space to maintain the translucence of the tall panels. As a result, Corian® helped capture the feeling and the energy of these sports moments in a unique and powerful way to help immerse visitors in the excitement of NFL history.

The curved walls and unique display stands of thermoformed Corian® also provide the uniform, seamless look needed on which to project the 49ers images in the many film and interactive exhibit spaces throughout the Museum.

Corian® Solid Surface Makes Creative Visions Real

Designers of corporate and public spaces rely on highly functional, yet creatively liberating, Corian®.

Public space design is always high-profile. Be it an expression of corporate brand essence or a symbol of civic pride, there are always multiple, demanding constituencies, and the work has to be superb. Public and corporate spaces demand materials that can both convey the right image and withstand the wear and tear that comes with heavy daily traffic.

With its seamless appearance and solid feel, Corian® has the substance to create impressive, large-scale designs, while also offering the durability, ease of cleaning, and minimal maintenance that these spaces require in the long term. Corian® solid surface works in myriad public and corporate applications, including corporate foyers, wall cladding, exterior cladding, corridors, elevator walls, staircases, railings, shopping centers, playgrounds, airport lounges, and public plazas. No matter what the space – Corian® is the perfect solution.

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