The National Building Museum's BEACH to be recycled for arts competition in D.C.

The immensely successful indoor BEACH is down to its final exhibition days at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. Since opening to the public on July 4, over 120,000 visitors both young and old dove into its bubbly "waters", lounged about on the "shore", and perhaps got to catch a live band rock out inside the 10,000 square-foot monochromatic ball pit, designed by Brooklyn-based Snarkitecture. The Beach closes on September 7, but that won't be the last of it.

Read on for more.

With more than 650,000 plastic balls in the pit, recycling the Beach was always part of the plan. Even before the installation opened, representatives of the D.C.-based initiative, the Dupont Underground, proposed to transport, store, and re-use its building materials. 

The Dupont Underground has set its sights on revitalizing an abandoned trolley station beneath the Dupont Circle neighborhood into a public venue for arts and design-oriented events.

As part of their inaugural programming, Dupont Underground will take all of the Beach's anti-microbial plastic balls and its 6,000 square feet of construction mesh to be reused in an arts competition later this year. Entrants will then design a new site-specific installation using the plastic balls as the primary material.

Following the competition, the Museum and Dupont Underground will continue planning further re-use or recycling of the materials. Whatever still remains of them will be donated, recycled, or reused by the Museum.

Check out some photos below from the Museum's Late Nights and Ward Days events this summer.