National Building Museum brings back Snarkitecture for this year's big summer installation

Finally, some architectural news coming out of Washington, DC, that isn't bumming everyone out: The National Building Museum just announced the return of Snarkitecture for its annual Great Hall summer installation series, opening July 3 and running through August 30. 

While details are still under wraps until late May, expectations are already high given the studio’s track record of turning the mighty Beaux-Arts landmark into a giant playground for spatial experimentation. The New York practice, founded by Alex Mustonen and Daniel Arsham, has built an international following by collapsing the boundaries between architecture, art, installation, and pure mischief.

For anyone who remembers 2015’s The BEACH — a 10,000 square-foot sea of nearly one million translucent plastic balls filling the Great Hall like an architect’s dream version of a ball pit — the announcement feels a bit like a reunion tour. That installation drew more than 180,000 visitors and became one of the Museum’s defining crowd-pleasers. 

Snarkitecture returned in 2018 with Fun House, a surreal full-scale domestic environment that turned exhibition-making into an immersive spatial sequence. 

Stay tuned for more details to emerge later this month.