Image courtesy of National Building Museum

Icebergs at National Building Museum in Washington DC

US studio James Corner Field Operations has created an installation for the National Building Museum in Washington DC that evokes a glacial landscape, with giant shard-like forms that jut upward and downward. Called “Icebergs”, the installation consists of over 30 pentahedron and octahedron forms made of translucent polycarbonate panels. Visitors can wander through the structures, climb up a lookout bridge and use two slides to return to the sea floor.

Image courtesy of National Building Museum

James Corner Field Operations has installed the prismatic, shard-like forms – which range in height from five to 17 metres – inside the museum’s Great Hall. Some of the shards are suspended from the ceiling, while others jut up from the ground inside the installation, which encompasses 1,165 metres. The forms are contained within an enclosure constructed of blue netting to help mimic an icy, underwater scene. Some shards rise above the top of the enclosure, described as the “waterline”.

Image courtesy of National Building Museum

“As landscape representation, Icebergs invokes the surreal underwater world of glacial ice fields” said James Corner, founder and director of New York-based James Corner Field Operations. “Such a world is both beautiful and ominous given our current epoch of climate change, ice-melt and rising seas,” he added. The installation is meant to serve as a space for play and reflection. According to the studio, the design is “in stark contrast to the hot, humid world of the Washington DC summer outside”.

more. nbm.org