Since 2017 the Frost Science Museum, Miami's state-of-the-art science center, has anchored Museum Park alongside the Pérez Art Museum, and it now rises in front of you. The building complex — designed by Grimshaw Architects — contains a planetarium, an aquarium, and gallery spaces distributed across several structures connected by walkways. The aquarium features a remarkable three-story cylindrical tank that can be viewed from multiple levels, including from below through an acrylic lens the size of a swimming pool.
But the most important thing about Frost Science in the context of Miami is its exhibits on climate change and sea level rise. Miami is one of the most vulnerable major cities in the world to the effects of climate change: most of the urban core sits just four to six feet above sea level, the limestone bedrock is porous, and saltwater is already intruding into the freshwater aquifer. Frost Science engages those realities head-on, making it not just a tourist attraction but a civic institution wrestling with an existential question.
For Miami, climate change is not an abstraction. It is a planning document.