After 10 years and $500 million in the making, the California Academy of Sciences will open its doors tomorrow. This, "masterpiece in sustainable architecture, blends seamlessly into the park's natural setting, and is filled with hundreds of innovative exhibits and thousands of extraordinary plants and animals." If you are around tomorrow, you can get in FREE! For those of you who can not make it tomorrow, here is a complete list of free days.

The 197,000 square foot rooftop is covered by California native plant species that lay in 3'x3' biodegradable trays designed by RanaCreek. The native species selected are nine in total.

Four Perennial Plants
Strawberry — Fragaria chiloensis
Self Heal — Prunella vulgaris
Sea Pink — Armeria maritima ssp. californica
Stonecrop — Sedum spathulifolium

Five Annual Wildflowers
Tidy Tips — Layia platyglossa
Goldfield — Lasthenia californica
Miniature Lupine — Lupinus nanus
California Poppy — Eschscholzia californica
California Plantain — Plantago erecta

The real marvel is how these trays, made of tree sap and coconut husks, trace the rolling foothills that mimic San Francisco's topography (well... that and how the engineers bent the steel at some points to push a 60 degree slope). SWA Group designed a grid system of gravel and wire mesh that acts as a boundary to support the flexible trays. It is a grid within a grid within a grid, if you will.

Read articles on California Academy of Sciences on Inhabitat and Metropolis.