Newseum Builders Press on To Make the Media the Message
Who, what, when, where, why and how. Journalism’s Five Ws+H have become a major assignment for builders of a $425-million homage to the Fourth Estate in Washington, D.C. The content of the interactive museum, which has the media as its message, is meant to be “devoured” by “readers” section by section. But the form doesn’t only evoke a large-format newspaper. The glass press box on “Main Street USA” also is designed to resemble a television, a camera or a world stage. The architecture is so layered with symbolism that it is taking 24 structural systems and 11 exterior wall systems—with 12 types of glass—to support or display the various double, triple and quadruple entendres. That and the prime-time Pennsylvania Avenue site put the 550,000-sq-ft job’s builders, marching toward a July 1 finish, on parade.
“It was hairy from time to time,” says James S. Polshek, of the job’s New York City-based architect, Polshek Partnership LLP. “But we beat our way through the bulrushes,” he adds.