Jacksonville’s Museum of Science & History has released a dramatically revised exterior design for its long-planned Northbank museum—one bearing little resemblance to the flowing, river-inspired landmark the organization presented in 2022.

The latest renderings show a five-story museum dominated by a large white perforated enclosure suspended above a glass-walled ground level. MOSH says the project has reached 60% completion of design schematics and remains on track for a 2027 groundbreaking, subject to city approvals. Current plans call for approximately 125,000 square feet, including 10 exhibits occupying about 50,000 square feet, along with a café and spaces for community programs and events.

MOSH board member and Design Committee Chair Lauren Baker described it as a “landmark destination” that would help shape Downtown Jacksonville’s future. Whether the new exterior rises to the level of a civic landmark—or resembles an oversized fast-casual restaurant—will likely become part of the public discussion now that the design has finally been revealed.

From an $85 Million Proposal to a $150 Million Campaign

The project’s price history requires some clarification. The original Northbank museum was publicly described as an approximately $85 million project in 2021 and 2022. By 2024, the projected cost had climbed to approximately $120 million. MOSH now reports a construction fundraising goal of $150 million, with almost $100 million raised from public, corporate and private sources.

That represents a $65 million increase, or approximately 76%, over the $85 million estimate associated with the earlier Northbank proposal. The $150 million figure is a fundraising goal and should not automatically be treated as the final construction contract, but it is the clearest current measure of the project’s expanded financial scale.

Jacksonville has committed $50 million through its Capital Improvement Plan. MOSH has also received major private commitments, including $10 million from CSX, along with state funding and other corporate, foundation and individual gifts.

The museum is a private nonprofit, but this is no longer an exclusively private undertaking. It involves substantial taxpayer funding, publicly controlled riverfront land and a long-term city partnership. That makes the cost, design and durability legitimate matters of public interest.

The Selection Process Was Competitive—but Not Publicly Driven

The architectural history is more complicated than today’s announcement might suggest.

In 2021, MOSH’s Board of Trustees and Genesis Oversight Committee conducted an eight-month competitive process to select an architectural team. Three finalists were identified: teams led by DLR Group, SmithGroup and Grimshaw Architects.

MOSH selected DLR Group as lead architect, working with Jacksonville-based Kasper Architects + Associates and New York landscape-architecture firm SCAPE. That team produced the 2022 design.

The selection was competitive, but it was led internally by the nonprofit’s board and project committee. MOSH said the architects reviewed information gathered through nearly a decade of community-input sessions, but there is no clear evidence that residents were asked to select among the three architectural teams or vote on competing exterior concepts.

That is not necessarily improper. MOSH is a private nonprofit and ultimately has authority over its own institutional vision. But public participation in choosing the architecture appears to have been indirect, despite the museum’s location on public riverfront property and the substantial city investment that followed.

The project later had to rebid its architectural and exhibit-design services for procurement purposes. That process resulted in MOSH replacing DLR Group with SmithGroup—the firm that had been one of the original three finalists. The change was publicly disclosed in 2024, along with confirmation that the museum would no longer resemble the previously published renderings.

The latest SmithGroup design has now been submitted to the Downtown Investment Authority for review, bringing the exterior into a more visible public approval process.

What Happened to the 2022 River-Inspired Museum?

The discarded 2022 design was intended to reflect the movement and flow of the St. Johns River. Its terraces rose from the waterfront toward the city, while a spiraling circulation route connected the lower museum to a rooftop terrace. Cantilevers created sheltered public areas, and the building was integrated with tidal terraces, event lawns, native gardens, play areas and other waterfront amenities.

Then-MOSH CEO Bruce Fafard called it “immediately recognizable” and said the architects had surpassed what museum leadership imagined for the iconic institution Jacksonville deserved.

That design was not universally beyond criticism, but it clearly attempted to respond to its location. It appeared to belong beside the St. Johns River.

The new building is more rectilinear and commercially familiar. Its architectural identity comes primarily from a huge perforated white wrapper surrounding the upper floors, with glass and warm lighting underneath. It may prove more efficient to construct, program and operate, but MOSH has not yet provided a detailed public explanation of why the earlier river-inspired concept was abandoned beyond the required rebidding and change in architectural firms.

Who Is SmithGroup?

SmithGroup is a major integrated design firm with approximately 1,600 employees working across 21 offices. Its cultural portfolio includes work associated with the National Museum of African American History and Culture, The Franklin Institute, the Wisconsin History Center and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

That is substantial museum experience. However, I could not identify another major completed SmithGroup project in Jacksonville or Northeast Florida from the firm’s published portfolio. MOSH appears to be its most visible current assignment in this market.

That distinction also corrects some early confusion surrounding the new rendering: Kasper Architects did not create the newly released exterior. Kasper was the local architectural partner on the discarded 2022 DLR Group design. Kasper’s extensive Jacksonville portfolio—including the Jaguars’ corporate offices, the Shipyards Marina Support Building, Southeast Toyota at Blount Island, the planned Armada soccer stadium and numerous educational, hospitality and commercial projects—is relevant to the project’s history, but not to authorship of the current SmithGroup design.

A Museum—or an Oversized Dairy Queen?

Architecture is subjective, and comparing a civic building to a Dairy Queen is not an allegation of copying. But the resemblance to contemporary fast-food and fast-casual construction is difficult to ignore.

The new MOSH uses several elements common to modern restaurant and retail prototypes: a broad rectangular upper box, a transparent glass base, deep horizontal overhangs, warm interior illumination and a visually dominant outer wrapper that could easily accommodate oversized commercial branding.

A modern Dairy Queen Grill & Chill uses a simpler, one-story version of that formula. Other contemporary fast-casual restaurants use glass pavilions, oversized canopies and rectangular facade panels to create an inexpensive but recognizable commercial presence.

The problem is not that the design is modern. The question is whether a $150 million riverfront museum should evoke a distinctive cultural institution—or a scaled-up commercial prototype awaiting its franchise sign.

White Looks Impressive in a Rendering. Jacksonville Weather Is Less Forgiving.

The perforated facade also raises a practical maintenance question.

The renderings depict what appears to be a predominantly white or very light-colored exterior screen. MOSH has not yet publicly specified the final facade material, coating system or maintenance program, so it would be premature to declare that the exterior will deteriorate.

Still, Northeast Florida’s subtropical environment is demanding. Heat, humidity, ultraviolet exposure, wind-driven rain, airborne dirt, algae, mildew and proximity to a brackish river can discolor light-colored exterior surfaces and stress coatings and metal components.

A perforated facade introduces additional considerations. Thousands of openings, joints and sheltered edges create more places for dirt and organic growth to accumulate. Cleaning an elevated screen wrapped around several stories may require specialized lifts, suspended-access equipment or scheduled facade-washing contracts.

The exterior can be maintained. But “it can be maintained” is not the same as maintenance being inexpensive, simple or consistently funded over the life of a publicly supported cultural building.

Before final approval, MOSH and SmithGroup should explain the proposed facade material, expected service life, corrosion resistance, cleaning method, anticipated maintenance frequency and estimated annual cost. Those are ordinary lifecycle questions for a $150 million project not objections to modern architecture.

The new MOSH may ultimately provide excellent exhibits and become an important educational destination. Its interior program could prove far more consequential than its exterior appearance.

But Jacksonville was originally shown an expressive museum shaped by the river. Four years later, it has been shown a large white box that, fairly or unfairly, looks more like a very ambitious Dairy Queen.

At $150 million, the public is entitled to ask what changed, why this design was selected and what it will take to keep all that white looking like the rendering.