Lawn

Every year the National Building Museum has a fun exhibit that takes up most of the atrium of their building. This year it is Lawn. They essentially built a giant sloping lawn on scaffolding, complete with hammocks, chairs, and lawn games. They made the building’s fountain part of the exhibit. They also piped in a summer soundtrack of noises like kids playing and lawn mower. I am not sure how I feel about the noises, especially the sound of a swarm of mosquitoes. However, it is a nice place to just chill out, and children clearly love it, especially the rolling down the slope part.

This year, they had tours of the exhibit discussing how it was built. Of course I had to go to that. We were able to go under the exhibit, which was rather cool. The structure is a giant scaffolding set that supports the lawn and observation tower. The structure is entirely self supporting. It is not supported by the building, except the floor of course. They also have hammocks that hang from the roof trusses. The hammocks are anchored to the lawn though, otherwise goodness how far people would try to swing them.

View of Lawn from the third story. The white panel at the back is an observation tower.
At the base of Lawn, watching kids roll down the slope
Lawn is built around the columns
Hammocks hang from the roof, but are anchored to the structure
Hammocks hang from the roof, but are anchored to the structure
View from the observation tower at the back of Lawn
Walking up the steps to the observation tower
Back of Lawn where tickets are purchased
Underneath Lawn is a giant scaffolding structure