Welcome Galleries

The Challenge

This project creates what is referred to as a new "friendly front door." It provides the welcoming gesture that the existing facilities lack.

Visitors simply don’t know where the Museum is inside the vast, historic Pension Building and how to find ticketing, galleries, or other services.

Project Vision

Taken together, the Welcome Center spaces are the beginning of a visit that talks in many ways about the impact of our built environment on our lives.

As designers, we hope that by better understanding the relationship between humanity and nature to develop great respect for our resources.

Design & Execution

The Welcome Center consists of three unique spaces of equal dimensions. They are experienced sequentially as part of the new entry sequence to the Museum.

Gallery 1 includes a monumental display case filled with examples from the Museum’s collections. Gallery 2 looks at constructed landscapes, infrastructure, cities, and places for gathering. We discuss urban issues and their effect on human health, living, and working via a central table installation featuring a dynamic, programmed, light “graph” of American urban resilience. Gallery 3 shows the full-size materiality of constructed places. There are several audio devices where visitors can hear firsthand from designers about making material choices to understand the cultural context.

Slideshow

Welcome Galleries