Snarkitecture's 10,000 sq ft indoor BEACH at the National Building Museum

2015-07-07T14:07:00-04:00

Following Bjarke Ingels Group's wildly successful BIG Maze last summer, one could only wonder how Washington D.C.'s National Building Museum would one-up itself this time around. Enter Alex Mustonen and Daniel Arsham of Snarkitecture, who envisioned the 10,000 square-foot indoor BEACH that opened on July 4 in the Museum's Great Hall.

Decked out in Snarkitecture's all-white aesthetic, the monochromatic installation has beach chairs and umbrellas on the "shoreline" and an "ocean" of nearly 1 million recyclable translucent plastic balls for visitors to "splash" in, facing a mirrored wall that creates the illusion of a vast expanse. The Museum commissioned Snarkitecture to design the giant ball-pit — which was first announced back in April — for the annual “Summer Block Party,” which consists of various public programming, exhibitions, and events.

'We see the commission as an exciting opportunity to create an architectural installation that reimagines the qualities and possibilities of ma...

Kevin Roche in His Own Words

2012-06-07T13:09:00-04:00

In 2008, while conducting research on the work of celebrated modernist Kevin Roche (b. 1922), Yale School of Architecture associate professor Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen conducted a series of interviews with the architect in his Hamden, Connecticut, home. She included selections from the interviews in Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment (Yale University Press, 2011), the monograph published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name.

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Snarkitecture's 10,000 sq ft indoor BEACH at the National Building Museum

Kevin Roche in His Own Words