A new family-oriented installation at the Skirball Cultural Center in west Los Angeles is called Noah’s Ark, but Noah and God have been omitted. Instead, Jim Olson and Alan Maskin, partners in the Seattle-based architectural firm Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen, have organised a voyage through the universal flood myth.

Drawing on their experience of designing an (unrealised) children’s museum and inspired by artefacts from diverse cultures, they’ve created an interactive display to engage the bodies and imagination of small children. The experience is educational and aesthetic. By abstracting and fragmenting ark and animals, they also delight lovers of bricolage and assemblage. Found objects and scavenged materials (including violin cases, surgical tubing, bed springs and bamboo vegetable steamers) are combined with carved wooden heads to create nearly 300 playful, expressive birds and animals – several of which have been animated by puppeteer Chris M. Green.

For Olson, the challenge was “to insert a model ship into a bottle”, creating a convincing ark in two galleries that are separated by a glass bridge. He achieved this by dividing the story into two parts: enlisting children to simulate a storm and “build” a first ark by filling gaps in a soaring structure of fresh Douglas fir. Across the bridge is a second, barn-like ark of seasoned wood where the animals have settled in, and children can climb rope ladders to feed them.

Mirrors and cutaways make these interiors seem more expansive. Beyond is a classroom area with a painted rainbow and a dove flying in with an olive branch. The moral messages – of meeting the challenge of natural disasters, of nurturing multicultural communities, and working towards a better world – are universal and timely. Michael Webb

https://www.skirball.org