LAB and KlingStubbins formed the winning team for a competition to design the new National Museum of Health and Medicine. The site constraints were daunting: the building itself had to be wedged between a highly secured access road and a deep swale, access to the Museum was from a single point at some remove from the building and its entry, security requirements needed to be accommodated, there were almostten feet of grade change between the entry point to the site and the front door of the Museum that had to serve both able-bodied and handicapped visitors and a grove of existing, mature oak trees needed to be incorporated without adversely affecting their health.LAB’s solution came from a recognition that a primary building material,weathering steel, would be a visible component of the building. Thissuggested a series of very thin retaining walls of steel plate that allowed the site to be carved rather than graded. This approach yielded an angular landscape of “trenches” with walls that echoed the both the geometry and the materiality of the new Museum.
