The National Museum of the United States Army (NMUSA), a cultural institution that is the first to tell the story of the oldest branch of the United States military, recently completed and opened on Veterans Day.
Located 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C., the facility is designed to serve as a center of education, and the symbolic front door of the Army. The museum focuses on the individual soldier, not battles or wars, to tell a centuries-long narrative of honor, sacrifice, and valor.
The LEED Silver-certified museum spans 84 acres across the Fort Belvoir Military Installation in Virginia and comprises a series of pavilions for exhibits and special events. The building leverages the site’s natural topography and rests atop a plateau to evoke a sense of monumentality. SOM’s design and planning for the future of the site includes a quiet memorial garden, a parade field and grandstand, and an Army Trail with interpretive stations.
Symbolism is at the core of the museum’s design. The symbolic experience begins with the access road, which offers a glimpse of the stainless steel-clad museum through the tress and across a long meadow. The museum rises to 100 feet at its peak, and its facade is composed of a regular grid of laser-cut stainless steel panels that establish a sense of rigor and discipline that are central to the design. At the corner of each pavilion, recessed glass panels alternate with painted aluminum fins to add a sense of dynamism. The complex lies on a three-foot grid system with every joint and edge of the building falling on each subdivision with precision, meaning the aluminum fins are spaced 18 inches apart to fall exactly on the edges of the panels.
Inside, the symbolism continues with stainless steel pylons sharing individual soldier stories and leading visitors from the promenade, through the vestibule, and into the exhibition hall. The grand lobby, which can be used as an event space, includes the Department of the Army’s emblem inscribed on the terrazzo floor and a black granite wall that lists every campaign from the Army’s history. Above, a coffered ceiling with 22 rows of translucent, laminated glass panels match the colors of the campaign streamers from the Army’s past.
See Also: First rendering of the National Medal of Honor Museum unveiled
Retail, a cafe, the first of three landscaped terraces, and exhibition spaces including a 300-degree theater surround the lobby. A monumental staircase leads visitors to additional exhibition spaces on the second floor.
Glass and wood thresholds connect each pavilion to signify transitions between spaces and provide views outside. On the third floor a wood-clad Veterans’ Hall serves as an event space supplementing the lobby. The Veterans’ Hall connects to the Medal of Honor Garden. Here, a 10-foot-tall black granite wall is engraved with the names of every medal recipient.
Sustainable features include increased insulation, improved glazing, high-efficiency LED lighting, automatic daylighting controls and occupancy sensors, and a green roof.
Related Stories
| May 19, 2014
What can architects learn from nature’s 3.8 billion years of experience?
In a new report, HOK and Biomimicry 3.8 partnered to study how lessons from the temperate broadleaf forest biome, which houses many of the world’s largest population centers, can inform the design of the built environment.
| May 15, 2014
First look: 9/11 Memorial Museum opens to first-responders, survivors, 9/11 families [slideshow]
The 110,000-sf museum is filled with monumental artifacts from the tragedy and exhibits that honor the lives of every victim of the 2001 and 1993 attacks.
| May 13, 2014
19 industry groups team to promote resilient planning and building materials
The industry associations, with more than 700,000 members generating almost $1 trillion in GDP, have issued a joint statement on resilience, pushing design and building solutions for disaster mitigation.
| May 13, 2014
Libeskind wins competition to design Canadian National Holocaust Monument
A design team featuring Daniel Libeskind and Gail Dexter-Lord has won a competition with its design for the Canadian National Holocaust Monument in Toronto. The monument is set to open in the autumn of 2015.
| May 11, 2014
Final call for entries: 2014 Giants 300 survey
BD+C's 2014 Giants 300 survey forms are due Wednesday, May 21. Survey results will be published in our July 2014 issue. The annual Giants 300 Report ranks the top AEC firms in commercial construction, by revenue.
| Apr 29, 2014
USGBC launches real-time green building data dashboard
The online data visualization resource highlights green building data for each state and Washington, D.C.
| Apr 24, 2014
Unbuilt and Famous: LEGO releases box set of Bjarke Ingels' LEGO museum
LEGO Architecture has created a box set that customers can use to build replicas of the LEGO Museum, which is not yet built in real life. The museum, designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group, will commemorate the history of LEGO.
| Apr 18, 2014
Multi-level design elevates Bulgarian Children's Museum [slideshow]
Embodying the theme “little mountains,” the 35,000-sf museum will be located in a former college laboratory building in the Studenski-grad university precinct.
| Apr 16, 2014
Upgrading windows: repair, refurbish, or retrofit [AIA course]
Building Teams must focus on a number of key decisions in order to arrive at the optimal solution: repair the windows in place, remove and refurbish them, or opt for full replacement.
| Apr 15, 2014
12 award-winning structural steel buildings
Zaha Hadid's Broad Art Museum and One World Trade Center are among the projects honored by the American Institute of Steel Construction for excellence in structural steel design.