Tools of the Trade
Tools and equipment are essential to the work of the architects, engineers, and tradespeople who design and build our world. The National Building Museum’s collections include a variety of tools…
Small But Mighty: Storing Ephemera
What information can a CD-R, a newspaper clipping, and a business card tell us about a museum? When they are all part of an accession file, they can give us…
Collections Highlight: Material Samples
Documenting and preserving the history of the built environment means looking beyond finished buildings to the smaller, seemingly inconsequential materials that reveal how they were designed and constructed. When you…
Taking the Spotlight: Architecture and New York Fashion Week
New York Fashion Week has arrived, one of the few times of the year when a city of more than 8 million people unifies on one topic: fashion. (Aside from the…
Learning the Cataloging Process for New Acquisitions
What happens to an object after a museum acquires it? Before a new object can find its permanent home in the National Building Museum’s collection, it needs a number, a…
Collections Highlight: James Stewart Construction Collection
Before a building becomes a landmark, it is a construction site, full of excavation, machinery, workers, and plenty of mud and dust. The James Stewart Construction Collection at the National…
Why Human Connection is Driving the Future of the Office
By Lenny Beaudoin, Executive Managing Director, Global Workplace, Design & Occupancy, CBRE After years of debate about remote work, hybrid schedules, and whether offices even have a future, a different…
Haunted by Light: Seeing Architecture Through Negatives
At first glance, the room looks haunted. The sky outside the window is dark and heavy. The windows glow bright white. The floor seems pale and shining, while the walls…
Collections Highlight: Koubek Architects Archives
In the mid-twentieth century, the Washington metropolitan area underwent a dramatic transformation, and D.C.-based architect Vlastimil Koubek was at its center. From the 1960s to 1980s, Koubek Architects completely reshaped…