BERLIN -- The first visible object upon walking into the Martin Gropius Bau here is the huge, rotating metal and orange globe.
Looming three stories above ground, it sits beside a futuristic glass elevator that whooshes up visitors for a closer look. On one side, a huge, roughly welded double helix that the designer calls the "Jacob's Ladder of the 21st century" provides support.
It's part modern art, part astronomy lesson, and resembles nothing so much as a futuristic action film prop.
The action film subtext is no accident -- the designer is Ken Adam who, after fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, went on to become an Oscar-winning special effects designer for James Bond films.
The modern art and the science lesson components of "Seven Hills: Pictures and Symbols of the 21st Century" are no accidents, either.
It is a science museum, an art museum, a history museum, and a zoological museum all rolled into one. The disparate pieces are joined by a common theme: the new millennium.
"We cannot act like we know everything about what's going to happen in the 21st century," says the exhibit's chief curator, Gereon Sievernich. "But we can say what questions will be answered in the 21st century."
The US$13 million exhibit -- the work of about 200 science organizations, artists, and museum organizers -- opened this week to the curious, despite grumbling about the high cost of the exhibit. (It was funded by the lottery.)
Nonetheless, the exhibit is fast drawing national attention, and its hipper, more introspective edge may lure away visitors from the behemoth next door: this year's World's Fair.
Expo 2000 opens in Hannover, Germany, on June 1 with a futuristic environmental theme.
The museum exhibit's "seven hills" are its seven thematic areas: jungle, cosmos, civilization, knowledge, dream, faith and, in the center, nucleus.
In the main hall, or nucleus, visitors will find the most interesting gadgets. The room's biggest draw is Humanoid Robot P3. The white plastic machine modeled in a human form now walks up and down stairs and waves. Eventually, its makers hope it will provide care for the elderly.
On a cuter, less practical side are the AIBO robot dogs, which play soccer (not very well) and also pause to scratch behind their metal ears.
But real tech geeks will probably be more interested in the exhibits upstairs. There, you can play the first computer game ever created -- Space War, designed by MIT students in 1962 -- and browse through a sampling of later game technologies.
Another intriguing exhibit is ELIZA, a virtual therapist invented in 1966. Here you can pour out your heart as it poses helpful questions such as, "I'm not sure I understand you fully," or urges you to "Please go on."
Beyond showcasing games and gadgets, "Seven Hills" also melds art and technology in deeper, more introspective ways.
Next to a row of ancient religious articles, for example, on a slightly tilted floor, a bank of computer screens shows different religious websites, intimating the direction spirituality may take in the future.
Elsewhere, visitors can take a virtual tour of the pre-Roman-era Pergamon library and other ancient artifacts, or run their own joystick-driven tour through the Reichstag, which now houses the German parliament.
The modern-art-meets-architecture theme that is the concept behind the globe in the center of the museum continues throughout. Rooms turn at jarring angles or are painted bright, incongruent colors. In the jungle area, where you can marvel at the thousands of species of bugs gathered from just one tree in Kinabalu National Park, there is a squishy gym mat floor covering.
The design ideas are intriguing, although not always practical. Slightly tilted walkways, for example, can trip up the unwary, and some exhibit areas were so sparsely lit that it was difficult to read the placards.
The dazed look on visitors' faces, however, seemed to come more from the content than the lighting or architecture. Trying to take in artistic movements, scientific movements, and the odd computer game can prove too much for an afternoon museum visit.
Sievernich acknowledges that the exhibit is dense, but he doesn't think that should faze visitors.
"One cannot take it all in the first time, and it should be that way," he said. "You should visit it seven times -- or at least two times."
"Seven Hills" runs through October 29.