New wing of the American Museum of Natural History offers respite from the concrete jungle

From the top of the staircase in the Kenneth C. Griffin Exploration Atrium of the Richard Gilder Center, visitors can take in the full scope of the five-story Griffin Atrium.Iwan Baan

There’s a new canyon in the middle of Manhattan. Just off Columbus Avenue, the doors to the Gilder Center at the American Museum of Natural History open onto what seem to be curving formations of stone. Their stubbly walls curve and swoop up to a fifth-floor ceiling where round skylights let in the sun.

But the stone is in fact concrete, and this seemingly natural system is a spectacular work of architecture: It’s the heart of the new Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation. This $465-million, 230,000-square-foot addition to the famed museum, which opens May 4, gives the AMNH new attractions and one of the most fascinating works of architecture to come along in a generation.

The atrium’s curves were created through shotcrete, a technique in which liquid concrete is sprayed onto steel forms.Iwan Baan

The project’s lead architect, Jeanne Gang, describes the central atrium as “a connective space” that spurs curiosity. She and her Chicago-based firm Studio Gang studied the geometry of canyons and caves, “where one can see how the natural forces shaped the material and shaped our world,” she said. “Their curvature and porosity encourage flow and movement.”

The atrium’s curves were created through shotcrete, a technique in which liquid concrete is sprayed onto steel forms. Usually, shotcrete is employed to create tunnels. Here the steel forms were computer-fabricated into novel shapes, and the concrete is both structure and surface. It’s crossed by a bridge and punctuated by round openings that peek into galleries.

Off the main atrium, a new insectarium stands ready to welcome visitors. When I visited, the leafcutter ants were busy: They harvested bits of forsythia, then carried them across a transparent bridge to fertilize their fungal nests.

One floor up, in the new Davis Family Butterfly Vivarium, dozens of Lepidoptera native to Asia or Africa fluttered through the warm, tropical air. A blue morpho, a Latin American species whose wings are a stunning cerulean, fluttered past and landed on a pink leaf. Outside, redbud trees bloomed their own shade of pink.

On its five levels, the Gilder Center connects to 10 existing wings in 33 different places.Iwan Baan

The AMNH is one of the most prominent museums of its kind in the world and a major New York tourist destination, especially for families. But it has grown up piecemeal since its beginnings in 1869. The Gilder Center provides a new entrance and cleans up the routes through the museum complex. On its five levels, it connects to 10 existing wings in 33 different places.

More than this, the Gilder represents a symbolic opening-up of the museum. At the turn of the 19th century, natural history museums were focused above all on collecting. The architecture reflected this inward culture; like many of its peers, the 19th-century building has a fortresslike cast. But the museum has been engaged in what museum president emeritus Ellen V. Futter calls a “debricking.” The museum sits in a park, “and we wanted the building, nature and the environment to be in dialogue,” Ms. Futter said.

Indeed, the new building invites connections between past and present, indoor and outdoor, exhibition and reality.

“Many of the species in our insectarium are local,” museum vice-president Lauri Halderman explained, “because we want kids to be able to go outside and spot them in the park.”

The new showpiece for visitors is a projection exhibition, Invisible Worlds, which visualizes different kinds of networks in biology and physics: Strands of DNA dance across the walls, plankton swoop across the ocean floor, and strands of light bring the activity of the human brain to brilliant life.

Along the edges of the Gilder Center, displays invite visitors to explore the ways in which museum experts use the collection. Here, a set of 1,500-year-old carved bricks reveal Maya deities; nearby, a cylinder of stone from a Montana rock formation, 2.7 billion years old, provides geological evidence of climate change.

These days, the stakes for natural history couldn’t be higher. The museum’s leaders are acutely aware that science itself is under threat from conspiracy theories and conservative politicians alike.

“Part of this building is making clear that science is a process,” says president Sean Decatur, “opening that up and inviting visitors to be part of the process.”

It helps to have new architecture that shows off contemporary design and engineering at its most creative. Ms. Gang, the architect, said: “I hope all these forms and openings invite curiosity and get people to begin exploring.”