National Building Museum: underwhelming
On Saturday, I went to the National Building Museum for the first time. Although it's not directly on the Mall, it's still pretty conveniently located just outside of Judiciary Square station or a short walk from Gallery Place/Verizon Center.
So getting there was no problem, and in fact, I've walked past the building a number of times when arriving or departing DC from Judiciary Square. Only today did I finally pay the museum a visit, enticed by the prospect of a group discount on the ticket price (usually $10; $5 per person at the group rate if you have at least 10 people. Thanks to GGWash for organizing the outing so we could all get the group discount.)
Being interesting in urban planning and architecture now, I'd been meaning to visit the Building Museum at some point, since it seemed like a natural fit for those interests. Now that I've been there, I don't think I'd go back unless they got a new exhibit that seemed really interesting. The museum was underwhelming and I think anyone who's experienced some of the other popular DC museums for comparison purposes might reach the same conclusion.
What follows is a bit of space analysis and visitor experience observations.
TL;DR: good concept, poor execution -- presentation could use some work.
The building itself is a historical one and the museum is a form of adaptive reuse. The building has a cavernous atrium that almost feels a little too large and underutilized since there isn't currently an installation there (like "The Beach" in the past).
It was noticeably oddly humid inside the museum, especially in the atrium, which makes me think the ventilation system could use a bit of work. I expect humidity outside depending on the season and weather, or in the bathroom when I'm taking a shower, but inside any other building that's not a sauna, noticeable humidity is bad.
All of the exhibitions were housed in rooms from the building's previous use (i.e., the floor plan remains unchanged, as far as I could tell), behind doors that really should've been marked on each side to instruct people whether to push or pull. The style of handles didn't make this immediately apparent, so at least once I found myself pushing when I should've pulled. The doors were kind of heavy, too. A minor thing, but the devil's in the details. I didn't notice any elevators, but I'd assume and hope there were some somewhere in the building for ADA accessibility purposes.
The atrium is underutilized when there isn't an installation. It's a vast open space with the small front desk/ticket counter of the museum in the middle, along with an indoor fountain. There are some giant Corinthian columns.
As far as atriums go, the more modern ones in the National Gallery East building or the Newseum utilize their space better. I realize there's only so much you can do when adaptively reusing a historic building, but I think there is room for improvement.
The atrium needs more seating, especially when there isn't an installation. There seemed to be some platforms/riser type things near the fountain that some people were sitting on, but more seating distributed throughout the atrium would have made the space more inviting.
There were some plastic stool type things that could be moved around and sat on, but these also seemed to double as things for kids to clamber on and play with, which is what some kids were doing with most of them. There are two rows of four large columns in the atrium; I'd suggest placing stationary (or at least heavy enough that it's not easily moved) seating aligned between the outer columns as a pleasant arrangement.
The atrium was pretty sparse -- additional, better seating, plus some indoor plants (like in the National Gallery East building) to spruce up the space would be a nice touch. When there isn't an installation, bringing out some small mini-exhibits into the atrium would also be a good use of the space (think about the space after you enter the American History Museum, or the Air and Space Museum, or the National Gallery East building, for example). Decorative/informational banners could be hung from the second-floor railings as well to provide additional interest.
There was a small cafe/bakery tucked away in a nook on the ground floor -- it was easy to miss and I didn't go in. For some unknown reason, the seating for this cafe is up on the second floor. There's no good reason I can see for that -- there's a ton of underused space in the atrium, so why not place cafe seating there? Having to trudge up a flight of stairs to find tables to drink your coffee or eat a pastry isn't a good design. Additional cafe seating upstairs could've made sense, but there absolutely should've been some on the same level as the cafe itself. The seating on the second level wasn't particularly inviting either -- it seemed rather drab.
A number of the exhibits had notices on the doors prohibiting photography, but I think there were some that did not. Inside the exhibits there didn't seem to be any reminders about whether photography was allowed or not, which was a minor hassle -- I ended up not taking my camera out at all since I didn't want to keep stashing it and removing it as I moved through the museum. There didn't seem to be that much rhyme or reason to the no photography policy -- no flash photography I can understand, to preserve artifacts, but generally I recall photography being allowed in the other museums I've been to.
The lighting in the museum left something to be desired. Although exhibits in other museums might be dimly lit overall to preserve artifacts, there will generally be some kind of spotlights or backlights trained on the things in the exhibits you're supposed to be looking at, to emphasize them. I did not notice anything like this at the Building Museum, so I got the feeling that I wanted to turn up whatever dimmer switch the lights were on.
The building itself feels really large, owing to the atrium in the center. This allows you to get a good sense of how much space is in the building, and by extension, all the space that the exhibits don't fill. I think some of the space may be used for offices, but to the casual museum visitor, that's not apparent -- it's just seemingly unused/inaccessible space. The idea of served and servant space (i.e., public and private space) comes to mind -- the servant (private, inaccessible) space is too prominent, which detracts from what is there in the public space that visitors can access.
There are currently seven exhibits, two of which are play areas for children, so an adult visitor only really gets five exhibits.
The current exhibits are as follows:
All of the exhibits suffered from poor design and layout -- poor presentation of the information contained in them. Secret Cities, Evicted and Flickering Treasures had unintuitive layouts/organization. The circulation through them was unclear and they had a maze-like feel. In museum exhibits like these, the order in which you look at things generally holds more importance than in an art museum (like the Hirshhorn), so it's important to have a clear flow for how an observer should proceed through them.
I also think the exhibitions were laid out in a way that felt too cramped, which also contributed to their maze-like feel.
Architecture is urban planning on a smaller scale and urban planning is architecture on a larger scale -- they both deal with how spaces are designed, the uses contained in those spaces and the circulation in/around the spaces. Museum exhibit design also requires thought given to the organization and layout of the elements within them, especially with respect to circulation. An exhibit that's confusing to navigate is a frustrating experience. I don't recall having thought any museum exhibits were maze-like in a bad way before, until the Building Museum.
The Evicted exhibit was based on the book by Matthew Desmond, which I had read in the past. I had hoped the exhibit would enhance what I'd gotten from reading the book, but after seeing it, I didn't really feel like it did. This one had sort of a creative design, but again, somewhat poorly executed.
Much of the information was presented on shed-like structures meant to represent houses. This would've worked better if they hadn't been arranged in such a cramped way -- this exhibit should've been spread out into more rooms to allow more space for each shed. There was information on all sides of the sheds, but it was sort of unclear which side to look at first, and it wasn't immediately apparent that there was information on each side because of the way they were crammed into the room. Again, a circulation problem.
In some of the exhibitions, there were videos with benches in front of them. The benches were very uncomfortable -- it's understandable that they shouldn't be too comfortable, to prevent people from loitering, but these were uncomfortable enough that I didn't even want to sit on them and watch the videos.
House and Home was my favorite exhibit, but even that one could've used some work. A large portion of that exhibit consisted of historical home items (irons, lawn chairs, kitchenware, furnishings, etc) arranged on a wall with information about the items presented on panels at about waist height on a railing. The information panels had a numbered diagram with outlines of the objects as they were organized on the wall. The numbers on the diagram corresponded with numbered descriptions of the items. This was annoying because you had to look at the items, look at the diagram to find their correct number, then find the description about that numbered object. Poor presentation of the information.
A solution could've been to break up the displays and spread the items out a bit more (there were a few different sections that included around 20 items each) so that it'd be easier to match the items with their corresponding descriptions.
Throughout all of the exhibits, there wasn't a good balance of text to stuff. In many places, there was too much text and not enough stuff -- more photos than artifacts/objects, it seemed, and even then, the photos weren't presented in the most optimal way. This lent the museum the feeling of walking through a life-sized book -- if I wanted to read semi-lengthy (when you're speaking about museum exhibits) chunks of text accompanied by images, I'd read a book or go online.
Text has its place in museums, but it was generally poorly executed here. The fonts used for much of the text in exhibits also seemed too small in many cases -- too much, t00 small text in this museum. Smaller text makes sense in exhibits if used in moderation, but I thought there was a bit too much of it here, so I ended up glossing over much of it in some of the exhibits.
I also thought the museum could've included more information about local things regarding DC and maybe even the surrounding suburbs, perhaps something about the Metro system. The L'Enfant Plan, anyone? I also wished there had been an exhibit focused more on the history of urban planning, which could've included some local connections. The Secret Cities exhibit sort of touched on this, but it wasn't quite what I was hoping for.
There was a rather large model of downtown DC shoved into a corner of one of the walkways on the second floor, which was probably the most locally related item in the museum that I saw. It was outdated, as it was used by the city from 1960 to 1980, if I remember correctly. The presentation of this model was poor. It should've been in a larger space, and a current model (or at least wall map) of DC could've been displayed nearby for comparison.
The gift store was probably the best-executed space in the museum -- I guess it's easier to get a gift store right. For a museum ostensibly about architecture and urban planning, they could really use some help in utilizing their space better and designing the exhibits. As one of the people who visited with the GGWash group put it, the production quality was lacking.
It's probably the most disappointing museum I've been to that I can remember. It wasn't terrible, but I don't think I'd go back and there's definitely room for improvement. I'm glad I got a discount on the ticket.
I haven't read this book, "Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience," but I've heard of it and I was thinking about it while reflecting on my visit to the Building Museum.
So getting there was no problem, and in fact, I've walked past the building a number of times when arriving or departing DC from Judiciary Square. Only today did I finally pay the museum a visit, enticed by the prospect of a group discount on the ticket price (usually $10; $5 per person at the group rate if you have at least 10 people. Thanks to GGWash for organizing the outing so we could all get the group discount.)
Being interesting in urban planning and architecture now, I'd been meaning to visit the Building Museum at some point, since it seemed like a natural fit for those interests. Now that I've been there, I don't think I'd go back unless they got a new exhibit that seemed really interesting. The museum was underwhelming and I think anyone who's experienced some of the other popular DC museums for comparison purposes might reach the same conclusion.
What follows is a bit of space analysis and visitor experience observations.
TL;DR: good concept, poor execution -- presentation could use some work.
The building itself is a historical one and the museum is a form of adaptive reuse. The building has a cavernous atrium that almost feels a little too large and underutilized since there isn't currently an installation there (like "The Beach" in the past).
It was noticeably oddly humid inside the museum, especially in the atrium, which makes me think the ventilation system could use a bit of work. I expect humidity outside depending on the season and weather, or in the bathroom when I'm taking a shower, but inside any other building that's not a sauna, noticeable humidity is bad.
All of the exhibitions were housed in rooms from the building's previous use (i.e., the floor plan remains unchanged, as far as I could tell), behind doors that really should've been marked on each side to instruct people whether to push or pull. The style of handles didn't make this immediately apparent, so at least once I found myself pushing when I should've pulled. The doors were kind of heavy, too. A minor thing, but the devil's in the details. I didn't notice any elevators, but I'd assume and hope there were some somewhere in the building for ADA accessibility purposes.
The atrium is underutilized when there isn't an installation. It's a vast open space with the small front desk/ticket counter of the museum in the middle, along with an indoor fountain. There are some giant Corinthian columns.
As far as atriums go, the more modern ones in the National Gallery East building or the Newseum utilize their space better. I realize there's only so much you can do when adaptively reusing a historic building, but I think there is room for improvement.
The atrium needs more seating, especially when there isn't an installation. There seemed to be some platforms/riser type things near the fountain that some people were sitting on, but more seating distributed throughout the atrium would have made the space more inviting.
There were some plastic stool type things that could be moved around and sat on, but these also seemed to double as things for kids to clamber on and play with, which is what some kids were doing with most of them. There are two rows of four large columns in the atrium; I'd suggest placing stationary (or at least heavy enough that it's not easily moved) seating aligned between the outer columns as a pleasant arrangement.
The atrium was pretty sparse -- additional, better seating, plus some indoor plants (like in the National Gallery East building) to spruce up the space would be a nice touch. When there isn't an installation, bringing out some small mini-exhibits into the atrium would also be a good use of the space (think about the space after you enter the American History Museum, or the Air and Space Museum, or the National Gallery East building, for example). Decorative/informational banners could be hung from the second-floor railings as well to provide additional interest.
There was a small cafe/bakery tucked away in a nook on the ground floor -- it was easy to miss and I didn't go in. For some unknown reason, the seating for this cafe is up on the second floor. There's no good reason I can see for that -- there's a ton of underused space in the atrium, so why not place cafe seating there? Having to trudge up a flight of stairs to find tables to drink your coffee or eat a pastry isn't a good design. Additional cafe seating upstairs could've made sense, but there absolutely should've been some on the same level as the cafe itself. The seating on the second level wasn't particularly inviting either -- it seemed rather drab.
A number of the exhibits had notices on the doors prohibiting photography, but I think there were some that did not. Inside the exhibits there didn't seem to be any reminders about whether photography was allowed or not, which was a minor hassle -- I ended up not taking my camera out at all since I didn't want to keep stashing it and removing it as I moved through the museum. There didn't seem to be that much rhyme or reason to the no photography policy -- no flash photography I can understand, to preserve artifacts, but generally I recall photography being allowed in the other museums I've been to.
The lighting in the museum left something to be desired. Although exhibits in other museums might be dimly lit overall to preserve artifacts, there will generally be some kind of spotlights or backlights trained on the things in the exhibits you're supposed to be looking at, to emphasize them. I did not notice anything like this at the Building Museum, so I got the feeling that I wanted to turn up whatever dimmer switch the lights were on.
The building itself feels really large, owing to the atrium in the center. This allows you to get a good sense of how much space is in the building, and by extension, all the space that the exhibits don't fill. I think some of the space may be used for offices, but to the casual museum visitor, that's not apparent -- it's just seemingly unused/inaccessible space. The idea of served and servant space (i.e., public and private space) comes to mind -- the servant (private, inaccessible) space is too prominent, which detracts from what is there in the public space that visitors can access.
There are currently seven exhibits, two of which are play areas for children, so an adult visitor only really gets five exhibits.
The current exhibits are as follows:
- Secret Cities: The Architecture and Planning of the Manhattan Project
- Evicted (based on the book by Matthew Desmond)
- Flickering Treasures: Rediscovering Baltimore's Forgotten Movie Theaters (some of the artifacts in this exhibit didn't seem to be labeled, such as a stained glass exit sign)
- Hoops (an exhibit of a photography series about basketball courts in all kinds of settings)
- House & Home (focused on residential architecture)
All of the exhibits suffered from poor design and layout -- poor presentation of the information contained in them. Secret Cities, Evicted and Flickering Treasures had unintuitive layouts/organization. The circulation through them was unclear and they had a maze-like feel. In museum exhibits like these, the order in which you look at things generally holds more importance than in an art museum (like the Hirshhorn), so it's important to have a clear flow for how an observer should proceed through them.
I also think the exhibitions were laid out in a way that felt too cramped, which also contributed to their maze-like feel.
Architecture is urban planning on a smaller scale and urban planning is architecture on a larger scale -- they both deal with how spaces are designed, the uses contained in those spaces and the circulation in/around the spaces. Museum exhibit design also requires thought given to the organization and layout of the elements within them, especially with respect to circulation. An exhibit that's confusing to navigate is a frustrating experience. I don't recall having thought any museum exhibits were maze-like in a bad way before, until the Building Museum.
The Evicted exhibit was based on the book by Matthew Desmond, which I had read in the past. I had hoped the exhibit would enhance what I'd gotten from reading the book, but after seeing it, I didn't really feel like it did. This one had sort of a creative design, but again, somewhat poorly executed.
Much of the information was presented on shed-like structures meant to represent houses. This would've worked better if they hadn't been arranged in such a cramped way -- this exhibit should've been spread out into more rooms to allow more space for each shed. There was information on all sides of the sheds, but it was sort of unclear which side to look at first, and it wasn't immediately apparent that there was information on each side because of the way they were crammed into the room. Again, a circulation problem.
In some of the exhibitions, there were videos with benches in front of them. The benches were very uncomfortable -- it's understandable that they shouldn't be too comfortable, to prevent people from loitering, but these were uncomfortable enough that I didn't even want to sit on them and watch the videos.
House and Home was my favorite exhibit, but even that one could've used some work. A large portion of that exhibit consisted of historical home items (irons, lawn chairs, kitchenware, furnishings, etc) arranged on a wall with information about the items presented on panels at about waist height on a railing. The information panels had a numbered diagram with outlines of the objects as they were organized on the wall. The numbers on the diagram corresponded with numbered descriptions of the items. This was annoying because you had to look at the items, look at the diagram to find their correct number, then find the description about that numbered object. Poor presentation of the information.
A solution could've been to break up the displays and spread the items out a bit more (there were a few different sections that included around 20 items each) so that it'd be easier to match the items with their corresponding descriptions.
Throughout all of the exhibits, there wasn't a good balance of text to stuff. In many places, there was too much text and not enough stuff -- more photos than artifacts/objects, it seemed, and even then, the photos weren't presented in the most optimal way. This lent the museum the feeling of walking through a life-sized book -- if I wanted to read semi-lengthy (when you're speaking about museum exhibits) chunks of text accompanied by images, I'd read a book or go online.
Text has its place in museums, but it was generally poorly executed here. The fonts used for much of the text in exhibits also seemed too small in many cases -- too much, t00 small text in this museum. Smaller text makes sense in exhibits if used in moderation, but I thought there was a bit too much of it here, so I ended up glossing over much of it in some of the exhibits.
I also thought the museum could've included more information about local things regarding DC and maybe even the surrounding suburbs, perhaps something about the Metro system. The L'Enfant Plan, anyone? I also wished there had been an exhibit focused more on the history of urban planning, which could've included some local connections. The Secret Cities exhibit sort of touched on this, but it wasn't quite what I was hoping for.
There was a rather large model of downtown DC shoved into a corner of one of the walkways on the second floor, which was probably the most locally related item in the museum that I saw. It was outdated, as it was used by the city from 1960 to 1980, if I remember correctly. The presentation of this model was poor. It should've been in a larger space, and a current model (or at least wall map) of DC could've been displayed nearby for comparison.
The gift store was probably the best-executed space in the museum -- I guess it's easier to get a gift store right. For a museum ostensibly about architecture and urban planning, they could really use some help in utilizing their space better and designing the exhibits. As one of the people who visited with the GGWash group put it, the production quality was lacking.
It's probably the most disappointing museum I've been to that I can remember. It wasn't terrible, but I don't think I'd go back and there's definitely room for improvement. I'm glad I got a discount on the ticket.
I haven't read this book, "Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience," but I've heard of it and I was thinking about it while reflecting on my visit to the Building Museum.
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