How Washington D.C.’s National Building Museum’s latest exhibition, Hive, features 2,700 cardboard tubes
The Great Hall at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. Image by Sean Pavone (via Shutterstock).
If you’re jetting off to America some time this summer, here’s an amazing exhibition that’ll appeal to you. At the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., this year’s Summer Block Party will feature three giant hives. The tallest of the three hives is 60 feet tall – equal to four double decker buses on top of each other. What’s amazing about the hives is their construction: cardboard tubes.
In cooperation with Studio Gang, the National Building Museum’s hives are inspired by the curvature of a spider’s web. With physical structures, they are inspired by Saarinen’s Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Brunelleschi’s Dome at the Florence Cathedral in Italy, and vernacular Musgum mud huts in Cameroon. The tallest one of the hives leave little to spare between its ceiling and the ceiling of the Great Hall. It is also dominated by its 10 feet oculus.
The cardboard tubes have a vivid silver exterior and a magenta interior. These give the hives a metallic look, tricking visitors into thinking metal and plastic tubes make up the hives. The lengths of the cardboard tubes range from several inches to 10 feet tall. Imagine how much tin foil a 10 feet tube would give you? It could have been fine for roast Stegosaurus.
If you’re a member of the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., admission is free of charge. For everybody else, it is $16 for adults (£12.35), $13 for concessions (£10.03), and $5 for Blue Star children aged three years and up (£3.80). The exhibition runs from the 04 July to the 04 September.
Romiley Board Mill, 03 July 2017.
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