Architecture of the Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC Report

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As the most prolific work of architecture, the National Air and Space Museum is considered to be one of Washington DC’s most important displays of the current modern architecture. It was designed by Gyo Obata and the building comprises four tubes that connect to three atriums.

The museum was designed as four plain travertine-encased cubes that contain both smaller and highly theoretical exhibits that are connected by three steel as well as glass atriums which are highly spacious. The three atriums house larger exhibits like missiles, spacecraft and airplanes.

The museum houses various important vestiges of air as well as space flight. It includes a model of Pioneer 10 which is the first space probe to depart the solar system. This was the novel Spirit of St. Louis plane that took Charles Lindbergh across the larger Atlantic. There is also the original Flayer, which is one of the planes that started it all by taking the Wright brothers into the air at Kitty Hawk. There is even a flight simulator in case one is in position to perform barrel rolls within the simulated fighters of World War II. (Moeller & Weeks 2001).

Thematic Exhibition Galleries

There are twenty three thematic exhibition galleries divisions within the museum that have names such as Pioneer Flight, Milestones of Flight, Space Race and Aviation in WWII. There are also interactive exhibits together with a 230-seat planetarium of Albert Einstein as well as the Langley IMAX Theater where one can be able to watch movies that involve breathtaking on a five stored screen. The museum also comprises a larger annex which is the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center that is located close to Dulles Airport. It was opened in December 15, 2003.

The flight milestones such as Write 1903 Flyer Earhart’s Lockheed Vega, the craft that took the astronauts into space and the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis are all available here. There exist other lesser known but very important workhorses of both commercial as well as aviation military for instance Douglas DC-3, the Piper J-3 Cub and the North American P-51 Mustang.

The Air and Space Museum is the most popular in the whole world. The building is reasonably dignified and certainly imposing. It is laudable mainly for being out of the way. It allows the inspiring artifacts of the museum to articulate for themselves. The issue of hanging many of the airplanes from the trusses is due to the fact that there was innovative design move that was employed at a significant scale.

The exterior of the museum has it own level of attraction. Architect Gyo Obata managed to designed north façade as a sequence of analytical and recessed bays. The pattern of the bays was geometrically supported by the National Gallery. It is a kind of a version that is abstracted of the yin together with yang. There is sharing of the typical Tennessee marble between the two buildings. The dark horizontal recesses at the top of the museum’s blocks have a similar slit in the Hirshhorn that is in the next door (Moeller & Weeks, 2001).

In the year 1988, a restaurant which was glassy was appended towards the east of the building. It has a sloping roof which offsets the insistently chunky nature of the main structure. The Smithsonian managed to open a subdivision of the museum adjacent to the airport. He named it Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. The facility has some of the institution’s largest and most important items. Some of the items include a prototype of the Enterprise space shuttle. There is also the beautiful SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. The building displays several aircrafts and space craft that were initially stored at Garber. Some of them were never seen before in any given museum setting. The center is likely to become the primary artifact restoration of the museum.

Reference

Moeller, M & Weeks C. (2001). AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, DC. Washington. DC. Prentice Hall Publishers.

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