Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow)

The Museu do Amanhã, or Museum of Tomorrow, is a science museum on the Píer Mauá beside Praça Mauá, built as an emblem of the renewal of Rio's port area ahead of the 2016 Olympics. It opened on 17 December 2015 and was designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, who said he drew inspiration from the bromeliads of the city's Botanical Garden.

The building was developed with the Roberto Marinho Foundation and covers about 15,000 square metres within grounds of around 30,000 square metres. Its design is meant to respond to the environment: movable solar spines run along the skylight and adjust to conditions, steel wing structures on the roof carry solar panels, and water drawn from Guanabara Bay cools the interior before it is reused in the reflecting pool. The museum drew about 25,000 visitors on its first weekend and had passed two million by July 2017.

Rather than displaying objects, the main exhibition on the upper floor is a multimedia narrative in five sections: Cosmos, Earth, Anthropocene, Tomorrows and Us. It begins with Cosmos, a 360-degree dome film of about eight minutes on the formation of the universe and of life. Earth includes three seven-metre cubes, one of them a glowing panel of the planet, and later sections use interactive games to explore the age of human impact and the choices that could shape the coming decades. The overall theme is sustainable cities and an ecological future.

The museum marked its tenth anniversary with an exhibition about its first decade, and its current programme also includes a new artwork in the outdoor sculpture garden and a virtual reality experience that revisits past exhibitions. Opening days and ticket details are published on its website, so check them before planning a visit.

Getting there is easy without a car. The museum recommends the VLT light rail: take line 1 (blue) towards Santos Dumont Airport or the Gentileza terminal and get off at Parada dos Museus, about 200 metres away. From Uruguaiana metro station there are two walking routes, one along Rua Acre and one via Avenida Presidente Vargas and Avenida Rio Branco past Candelária Church. The museum has no car park of its own; the closest private car park is in the RB1 building, about 100 metres from the entrance.

The interactive, screen-based exhibition suits teenagers and adults with an interest in science and the environment, and the building itself is worth seeing from the outside even without a ticket.