Lost in the Museum: Bjarke Ingels' maze will make you look up and around

For the past two years, the National Building Museum has put up a temporary mini-golf course for visitors to play in. But this year, they're taking museum-goers to a different place: a maze.

The maze was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and is a precursor to an exhibit (set for January 2015) showcasing some of the firm's projects. To navigate the maze, people must look up. Cathy Frankel, vice president for exhibitions and collections at the museum, told the Washington Post that the museum's “ubergoal is that people walk out of here looking at their built world differently. We think this is sort of on the microlevel of that—forcing people to look up [as they try to find their way through the maze] will make them look at our building differently.”

The maze actually gets easier as you go along, with the walls starting at 18 feet high and getting shorter towards the end. Frankel estimates that it takes about 40 minutes to navigate the 3,600-sf maze.

Placed in the museum's Great Hall, the maze's location may actually make it more difficult to complete. The hall is more or less symmetrical, and the walls are fairly similar, so only those sharp enough to figure out if they're facing north or south will be able to determine their location in the maze from the features of the larger room.

Allan Bilka, RA, is a Senior Staff Architect and Secretariat to the International Green Construction Code (IgCC) with the International Code Council, based in the ICC’s Chicago district office. He also serves as staff liaison to the ICC-700 National Green Building Standard. He has written several ICC white papers on green building and numerous green-related articles for the ICC. A registered architect, Bilka has over 30 years of combined residential design/build and commercial consulting engineering experience.

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Austin's newest urban apartment complex under construction

Complex sits on a four-acre waterfront site along Lady Bird Lake with spectacular city and lake views, and is slated to open spring 2013.

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Aerialogics announces technology partnership with CertainTeed Corp.

CertainTeed to provide Aerialogics’ Aerial Measurement Services to its credentialed contractor base and utilize the technology in its Roofing Products Division.