National Building Museum Opens Building Stories Exhibition

On Sunday, January 21, 2024, the National Building Museum in Washington, DC opened its new exhibition called Building Stories. It will be on display for ten years and is an immersive exploration of the world of architecture, engineering, construction, and design found in the pages of children’s books.

It occupies 4,000 square feet on the Museum’s ground floor and is reported to be the most ambitious exhibition ever undertaken by the Museum.

Partnering with curator Leonard Marcus, the nation’s leading expert on children’s literature, and Portland, Oregon-based exhibition and experiential design studio Plus And Greater Than, Building Stories strives to provide a portal into the wonder of the built environment through the imaginative lens of children’s books.

Designed for a multigenerational audience – children, parents, grandparents, and caregivers –the exhibit brings children’s books to life through a series of linked and immersive landscapes guided by the principles that the built world is exploratory, personal, surprising, inspiring, and transformative.

The exhibition is organized into four galleries: 

Gallery One: “Building Readers”: This introductory gallery explores a child’s first experiences of shapes, forms, imagery, and words as they become building blocks of language and the built environment. “Building Readers” also shows how the presentation of a story can be influenced by aspects of a book’s physical design and construction.

The many parallels between the design of books and the design of buildings are revealed as visitors are invited to consider both the process of building and that of book-making through a selection of rare book dummies, original sketches, and architectural models. 

Gallery Two: “Your Home, My Home”: With three archways inspired by the Three Little Pigs, visitors encounter an immersive round theater with a multimedia presentation that uses light, projection, and sound to explore the idea and expression of “home” in its many forms: a bedroom, a house, or a neighborhood and community. Many Homes, One World explores what home (or perhaps the loss or absence of one), looks like in cultures and locations around the world. 

Gallery Three: “Scale Play”: This gallery is entered through a “magic portal” threshold where a tapered tunnel makes visitors feel like they are changing size as they enter. It challenges our perceptions of the world around us through “scale play,” a recurring theme in children’s literature. What does it feel like to navigate the world when you are small? What is the impact of monumental architecture on how we perceive the spaces around us? Can zooming in or zooming out help us understand it all? 

Gallery Four: “Wider World”: This gallery brings all of the exhibition concepts together to focus on the possibilities for children’s real-world empowerment and participation. How can we build a better world, together? Visitors enter a light-filled landscape pulled from the illustrations of award-winning author/illustrator Oliver Jeffers.

The books on display in Wider World explore the connections between the natural world and manmade systems and how we might engage more responsibly by understanding their relationship. Stories emphasize characters who use their imagination and work together to shape their future and inspire other young visitors to do the same. 

The exhibition’s primary educational program is the free Building Readers Club in collaboration with the DC Public Library and DC Public Library Foundation. Children in kindergarten through eighth grade are encouraged to sign up.

Membership includes a monthly newsletter with age-appropriate activities and book suggestions, complimentary access to the Building Stories exhibition and special family-friendly club activities at the Museum four days per year, and early access to Building Stories programming.