Collections Highlight: Digitizing the Lautman Collection
Robert C. Lautman was a distinguished architectural photographer who established his practice in Washington, D.C. in the 1940s. Over the course of his career, he photographed many of the city’s…
New Acquisitions: 2026, Part 1
As part of its mission to inspire curiosity about the world we design and build, the National Building Museum actively collects objects, photographs, and paper materials that document the building…
Adopt an Artifact: Blueprint Machine
In the summer of 2024, Joan LaGrave and her daughter Elizabeth Albanese donated this blueprint machine to the National Building Museum. Recognizing its value to the history of architectural practice,…
Stories That Shape Us: Building Stories Reflections
In celebration of World Book Day, staff at the National Building Museum are turning the pages in Building Stories to share the books that have shaped their imaginations and informed…
Landscape Architecture Month Q&A with TERREMOTO
National Building Museum (NBM): Introduce yourself! Who is Terremoto? Terremoto: Terremoto is a landscape architecture office based in Los Angeles and Berkeley, California, co-founded by David Godshall and Alain Peauroi…
Collections Highlight: Historic Formica® Laminate
In 1912, two young electrical engineers, Daniel O’Conor (originally from New York) and Herbert Faber (originally from Cincinnati), discovered that high-pressure plastic resins could replace the mineral mica in insulation…
Coming Together: Reimagining the American Downtown
Your Voice: Future Cities Each step you take through the exhibition Coming Together reveals a new story, a new perspective, and an opportunity to participate. You’re first greeted by a…
Collections Highlight: Wurts Brothers Photography
The National Building Museum acquired the Wurts Brothers Photography Collection in 1983, making it one of the Museum’s earliest collections. At that time, the Museum had only recently been established…
Adopt an Artifact: Vlastimil Koubek Archive
Vlastimil Koubek, a Czechoslovakian modernist architect who designed more than one hundred buildings primarily in the Washington, D.C. metro region, immigrated to the United States in 1952. He initially worked…