City by Design

Students in grades 1-3 become a city planner for the day and design their own model city.

Consider the problems a city can have and offer solutions as you work together to design and plan your own community. Participants use their imaginations to design and construct model buildings for the city using colorful supplies and recycled materials. 

Your participant ticket includes access to all of the National Building Museum’s exhibitions. Additional exhibit tickets must be purchased separately. (Ticket sales end at midnight the night before.)

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Spotlight on Design: DAVID RUBIN Land Collective

Learn how empathy for the public’s engagement with memorials and park spaces informs the work of Philadelphia-based landscape architecture, urban design, and planning firm DAVID RUBIN Land Collective. Founding principal David A. Rubin, FASLA, FAAR, discusses the joys and challenges of navigating Washington, D.C.’s complex federal and local public space environment, all while steadfastly emphasizing and advocating for the equity, access, and inclusion of every visitor. Projects discussed include Canal Park, Potomac Park Levee, the National World War I Memorial, and Franklin Park. Jennifer Reut, acting editor of Landscape Architecture Magazine, facilitates the program.

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The Landscapes of Frank Lloyd Wright

Discover how Frank Lloyd Wright, usually known solely as an architect, considered the landscape as an integral element in his work. Mark Bayer, Bayer Landscape Architects, PLLC; Stuart Graff, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation; Jennifer Gray, Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, Columbia University; Justin W. Gunther, Falling Water; and moderator Stephen Morris, National Park Service, discuss how and why the work of Frank Lloyd Wright was sensitively integrated within their natural landscape settings and enhanced by their designed landscapes. The discussion includes several component buildings of the joint Frank Lloyd Wright World Heritage Site announced in 2019 as the first modern architecture designation in the United States, and the recently restored landscape of the Martin House.

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Book Talk: Chateau La Coste – Art and Architecture in Provence

Take a tour of Chateau La Coste, a unique property in Provence, France, that combines sculptural artworks by leading contemporary artists alongside pavilions and buildings by some of the world’s best-known architects, all within the grounds of a working vineyard. A privately owned winery, Chateau La Coste makes its grounds, artwork, and architecture available to the general public for a small fee (and, often, freely to visiting school groups). Architectural photographer Alan Karchmer and Robert Ivy, FAIA, CEO of the American Institute of Architects, talk about their book Chateau La Coste: Art and Architecture in Provence, which Ivy co-authored and for which Karchmer was the commissioned photographer. Beth Broome, managing editor of Architectural Record, moderates a discussion about this unusual combination of landscape, architecture, and art, of private industry and public benefit.

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D.C.’s Midcentury Master: Chloethiel Woodard Smith and the Livable City

Learn about Chloethiel Woodard Smith, FAIA (1910–1992), an American modernist architect and urban planner whose career was centered in Washington, D.C. She was the sixth woman inaugurated into the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows, and at the peak of her practice led the country’s largest woman-owned architecture firm. Neil Flanagan, architectural designer and writer, Peter Sefton, independent architectural historian, and Catherine Zipf, architectural historian and author, discuss the career and legacy of Smith, whose work in the District includes Harbour Square, Capitol Park Apartments and Townhouses, and a study of new uses for the Pension Building, now the National Building Museum. The program is moderated by Susan Piedmont-Palladino, director, Washington Alexandria Architecture Center and consulting curator, National Building Museum.

Begin your introduction to Chloethiel Woodard Smith by attending Washington Walks Women’s History Month 2021 Virtual Experiences, which features a virtual tour of some of her projects in Washington, D.C., in a program that airs at 12:30 pm on this day.

Learn more and purchase your tickets online.

Equity in the Built Environment: Improving Racial Equity through Greener Design

Understand how architects across the U.S. are working to improve the environmental and social sustainability of communities by protecting neighborhoods from gentrification, installing parks and public art exhibits in urban centers, and creating state-of-the-art libraries in financially challenged neighborhoods. Antoine Bryant, Assoc. AIA, project manager and business development at the Houston office of Moody Nolan; Gabrielle Bullock, FAIA, a principal and the director of global diversity at Perkins&Will in Los Angeles; and Rico Quirindongo, AIA, formerly a principal at DLR Group, now Deputy Director for City of Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development; discuss their work in these cities. Projects discussed include Midtown Public Square in Seattle; Destination Crenshaw in Los Angeles; and the Library Learning Center in Houston.

Improving Racial Equity Through Greener Design is based on the American Institute of Architects’ Blueprint for Better campaign to transform the day-to-day practice of architecture to achieve a zero-carbon, resilient, healthy, just, and equitable built environment.

This program continues the National Building Museum’s Equity in the Built Environment series of conversations that focus on how buildings, landscapes, interiors, and streets can be the cause of—and, more important, the cure for—social and racial disparities.

Register online.