Depending upon visitors’ angle of approach, Washington, D.C.’s new Spy Museum either announces its presence boldly or hides behind an unassuming party wall, which more or less sums up the guiding principles around its design by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSH+P): being hidden, or hiding in plain sight. For those arriving by car or on foot, the Museum’s angled, red steel supports reach out in an informal wave; arrival by Metro means ascending a lengthy staircase from underground to arrive at the building’s aluminum-clad posterior.
The Spy Museum is a private institution that seeks to uncover some of the more covert aspects of spy craft as well as those that are less clandestine. Those two ideas, of concealment and (at least partial) revelation, play out in the programming of the 120,000-square-foot building. From a bright, day-lit, double-height lobby, visitors ascend to the nominal fifth floor, which begins the dual-level tour through the museum’s collection within windowless, black box-styled galleries (the third floor will eventually house traveling exhibitions). The floors above are dedicated to offices and events, and topped by a roof terrace that commands sweeping, relatively unobstructed, panoramic views—thanks to the building height being measured from the L’Enfant Plaza surface level.
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