National Building Museum

If you ♥ Chicago architecture, you should know there are...

Thu, 31 May 2012 13:59:16 -0400

If you ♥ Chicago architecture, you should know there are currently two different, huge models of the John Hancock Center on view at the Museum

Rising from Tragedy: A Conversation with Calatrava, Childs, and Libeskind

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:13:43 -0400

Rising from Tragedy: A Conversation with Calatrava, Childs, and Libeskind:

Heroic. Contemplative. Grieving. Victorious. The rebirth of the former World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan has engendered significant public reaction and reflection. With implications as complex as they are profound, it is not surprising that it has taken more than a decade to heal the urban scars of September 11, 2001.

I had the rare opportunity to sit down with three architects working on the site, Santiago Calatrava, David Childs, and Daniel Libeskind, at the recent American Institute of Architects convention in Washington, D.C., where they were honored along with four others, as “Architects of Healing.” We discussed their experience of reshaping one of the most culturally significant sites in the history of the United States…

Here’s a gem from a recent visitor to House & Home.

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:56:32 -0400

Here’s a gem from a recent visitor to House & Home.

A bald eagle soars across the Great Hall - practice run...

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:04:38 -0400

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

A bald eagle soars across the Great Hall - practice run forAICPA’s big event last night.

Audience feedback from House & Home at the National Building...

Thu, 03 May 2012 11:34:25 -0400

Audience feedback from House & Home at the National Building Museum

Teens at the Intersection of Design and Science

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:03:59 -0400

This article is re-posted from Unearthed, the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) blog:

The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) recently served up an interesting challenge for local students—design mobile education “carts” for our new state-of-the-art Education Center, currently under construction here at NMNH.

The students, part of the National Building Museum’s Design Apprenticeship Program (DAP), are involved in a seven-week course in which students learn about design by designing and planning a product and then building it. For the last 11 years, the program has been giving middle and high school teens a chance to learn about designing, building, working as a team, and working for a client.

To be successful in their building design, the students learned about what kind of work is conducted at the National Museum of Natural History. DAP students met with scientists, educators, volunteers, and exhibits staff from the museum to learn about how and what NMNH scientists study, how science information is conveyed, and how the museum uses carts to give visitors an up-close view of objects and conduct demonstrations.

Supporting the program’s core values of teamwork, research, and peer communication, the DAP students met with NMNH’s Youth Advisory Board (YAB). YAB, a group of local teens working with NMNH to develop new ways to communicate science to their peers, provided the DAP students a perspective from other teens on what happens at NMNH and gave them an opportunity to exchange ideas.

Exposing the students to both museums has played a real role in helping students understand the intersection between design and science. “Design and science are interconnected. Design is all about how people perceive something, to the point that it really is a science…” said Vangie Hakes, a DAP teen.

“And in science, design is really apparent. Everything in the universe, whether it’s natural or man-made, is designed in a certain way, to serve a certain purpose. The way a thing works is based on its design.”

Since NMNH is in the midst of building its new education center, the design project has been very timely. The new education center will be a 10,000-square-foot space designed for students, families, teachers, and life-long learners to get up-close to the science behind the science at the National Museum of Natural History. Visitors will be able to handle and learn about 20,000 collection objects, attend lectures and events in a new theatre, and participate in activities in the classroom.

The new space will house activities focused on thousands of collection objects, education programs, and public programs that are designed to be happening simultaneously. The complexity of the Education Center space and program design is an important project component for the students to better understand how their education cart design will fit into the bigger picture.

Stepping up to the design challenge, DAP students understood that integration of the Education Center design was critical in creating a successful product. “This program teaches us how to listen to other ideas, patience, and compromise. At DAP I learned more cooperation skills and mixing skills meaning taking my ideas and the ideas of others, mixing them together to make one big design,” observed DAP student Taylor Hicks.

The collaborative effort between the two museums and their youth programs not only taught the students about design and building, but it also helped the students understand the value of communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity.

“Working with the actual client and meeting their needs really helps see what would happen in the real world because you have certain specifications you need to meet and if you don’t, they won’t be satisfied,” says DAP student Sumaiyah Liggans.

The collaboration between the National Building Museum and the National Museum of Natural History has been a successful pilot project. The DAP students are continuing to learn about design and building, while serving real community needs. Students from each of the Museum’s teen programs are also learning how transferrable their new skills are between the building and science disciplines.

On Saturday, April 28, 2012, from 1-3 pm, the National Building Museum will host a reception where the teens will present their prototypes. The event is free and open to the public, with refreshments after the presentations are complete. Come out to the National Building Museum to help these students celebrate their accomplishments.

Maggy Benson, Partnerships Manager, Office of Education & Outreach

Editor’s Note: DAP is open to 12-18 year old students in the Washington, DC metro region. There are two, seven-week semesters of the program per year, held in the fall and spring. Registration information for the DAP program is available on the National Building Museum’s website.

Images: Design Apprenticeship Program students work as a team to design and build mobile education “carts” for the National Museum of Natural History’s new Education Center. The students worked closely with National Museum of Natural History staff to understand how the mobile education “carts” would be used, to better inform their design and prototype, seen here being built. All images courtesy of the National Building Museum.

Happy Birthday I. M. Pei!

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:18:21 -0400

Happy Birthday I. M. Pei!:

Architect I.M. Pei at the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Courtesy Peter Rosen Productions

A parade of historic household objects from the new exhibition...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:01:16 -0400

A parade of historic household objects from the new exhibition House & Home

Space Shuttle Discovery fly-by at the National Building Museum

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:09:04 -0400

Space Shuttle Discovery fly-by at the National Building Museum

Interview with an Architectural Icon: Juhani Pallasmaa

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:42:19 -0400

Interview with an Architectural Icon: Juhani Pallasmaa:

“I have been a farmhand, a construction worker, an administrator, a university rector, a graphic and product designer, etc…but I do everything through an architect’s eyes and mindset. However, I don’t mean architect as a professional, but as an archetype, a “-smith,” as it were. A blacksmith would not be a professional, but almost a mythical person. In the same way I regard an architect as a supporter of the mythical dimensions of life, not a professionalist.”
-Juhani Pallasmaa

What You Do Not Know About National Building Museum in Washington D.C.

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:00:13 -0400

What You Do Not Know About National Building Museum in Washington D.C.

Toolsday #7

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:15:00 -0400

nbmoutreach:

Last week’s tool was…drum roll please… a bamboo splitter!

Watch this video, produced by yours truly, for a brief tutorial.

Interested in splitting your own bamboo? Check out this website for all of your bamboo splitting, drilling, and chopping needs.

Infographic: Women in Architecture

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 10:13:00 -0400

Infographic: Women in Architecture:

There could have been a DOLPHIN HOTEL in our nation’s...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:04:19 -0500

There could have been a DOLPHIN HOTEL in our nation’s capital.

Proposed Dolphin America Hotel, designed by Doug Michels Architecture in collaboration with Jim Allegro, AIA, 1989. Architect Doug Michels was fascinated by dolphins and proposed various projects that would bring humans into closer contact with the aquatic mammals.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-31434

See this and more at the exhibition, Unbuilt Washington

Two Questions, Four Women

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:13:13 -0500

Two Questions, Four Women:

On March 8, 2012 we present Women of Architecture: Architecture and the Great Recession, featuring a panel of four building industry leaders and moderated by Mara Liasson of NPR and Fox News. In advance of the event, we asked each panelist the same questions:

During this period of retrenchment, what are some of the changing priorities and values you see emerging in contemporary architecture? Do these changing priorities and values have any particular significance for women and gender?

Read responses from…

Sheila Cahnman, Group Vice President / Regional Healthcare Leader, HOK
MaryAnne Gilmartin, Executive Vice President of Commercial & Residential Development, Forest City Ratner Enterprises
Cathleen McGuigan, Editor-in-Chief, Architectural Record
Claire Weisz, Principal, WXY Architecture + Urban Design

Moby on LA Architecture

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:16:36 -0500

Moby on LA Architecture:

When Moby talks or does pretty much anything else, people listen. He writes his thoughts and images of LA architecture on the aptly named Moby Los Angeles Architecture Blog.

The City Imagined on Film

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:49:47 -0500

The exhibition Unbuilt Washington surveys architectural paths not taken; some seem unthinkable beside the iconic forms actually built. Skyscraper designs appear particularly strange—revealing how a limit on building heights not only altered Washington’s skyline, but also expectations for how the capital should appear. In contrast, the cinematic city of the imagination is a place where limits are usually left in the dust.

Skyscrapers, elevated highways, electronic devices—the 1930s city of the future is not far from that of today. Yet, futuristic films of the Depression era reflect keenly on challenging times, shading the possibilities of technology with a strong dose of ideological zeal. The film that established the design vocabulary for these, and other futuristic films to follow, is Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece, Metropolis—unsurpassed in its artistic vision of a dystopian urban society.

Read more

How to Build a Frozen Fortress

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:09:26 -0500

How to Build a Frozen Fortress:

If you missed rockstarchitect Bjarke Ingels’ presentation...

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:04:16 -0500

If you missed rockstarchitect Bjarke Ingels’ presentation at the museum, you can still catch it on our YT channel.

Bjarke Ingels, Danish architect and a founding principal of BIG/Bjarke Ingels Group, believes that quality of life does not have to be sacrificed when designing environmentally responsible architecture. Ingels explains this “hedonistic sustainability,” as seen through a variety of BIG projects that include a combination ski slope and waste incineration plant and a torqued-pyramid apartment building.

Moshe Safdie explores the creation of vital public spaces,...

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:05:05 -0500

Moshe Safdie explores the creation of vital public spaces, capturing the essence of place, and building with a purpose through recent and upcoming projects, including the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.; the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri; and Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort in Singapore, among others.