The striking new Medal of Honor Museum shows the weight of bravery

I am not sure whether architecture work has the ability to bring the Americans together at the moment, but in another time it may have been the National Medal of Honor Museum.

The 300 million dollar museum, which was officially opened on March 22nd in the entertainment district of Arlington, serves as a monument for those who have received the highest military award in the country, a “gallantry and the danger of his life over the reputation, over the reputation, over the reputation of the duty”.

The building makes a dramatic impression that, thanks to its defining gesture, a massive metal block (200 feet square), which runs about 40 feet above the ground and is intended for the psychological weight that was borne by the medal of honorary receiver.

From a distance it bears an almost sublime force, with its metal skin moving from light to dark with the change of conditions and the angle from which it is viewed. This includes his appearance of heaven; The metal cladding of the building extends to a roof that is not loaded by machines to present the blimps and drones a clean picture that regularly cover events at the adjacent sports facilities.

In its uncompromising assertion of an abstract form, it is a emphatic counter -poor for those who would suggest that only classic architecture has the corresponding beauty, dignity and symbolic power to present American values.

The design is the work of the architect Rafael Viñoly, born in Uruguaya, at least in its general contours, who died in 2023 during the planning and execution of the project. It was carried out by its Rafael Viñoly Architects, based in New York, which is still in operation as a partnership.

The museum is representative of the high-tech aesthetics and the structural daring that has characterized the company’s work since the foundation of Viñoly in 1983 and which is best illustrated by the 1997 Tokyo International Forum, a conference and cultural center with a high-flying, glass-roofing atrium. Last year it received the 25-year award from the American Institute of Architects, the highest honor that the organization for a building grants.

Despite all the successes, the company was also involved in a number of top -class controversy. Legal disputes in which design and construction failure claimed, 432 Park Avenue plagued, an almost 1,400 feet high luxury tower in Manhattan. Two of his buildings, 20 Fenchurch Street in London (better known as Walkie -Talkie) and the VDARA Hotel in Las Vegas, required measures to solve reflection problems that are similar to those of the museum storm in Dallas.

The company won the Medal of Honor Commission in 2020 and excluded three companies for the project, thanks to Viñolys’s dramatic presentation in the Museum Board. Viñoly avoids the renderings and models that were normally used in such meetings and illustrate the concept of the company with an awkward steel plate that is used as the basis for models. “Place it in the middle of the table covered with a black cloth and leave it there,” he said to Bassam Komati, the partner who would take over the project after his death.

When the meeting started, the block was unveiled – rush! – and then continued, so that board members feel the weight and implicitly captured the essential metaphor of the building. A stunt maybe, but it worked.

The block seems to be solid, but it is indeed a hollow box that holds the main exhibition space of the museum. Viñolys initial intent was that it was wrapped in steel, but due to the costs, it is stored instead in a grid of anodized aluminum plates. Each of them is about 6 feet square and divided into a smaller grille with 8-inch squares that are separated by a narrow expansion connection.

In addition to this change of material, the building remains much faithful to the original vision of Viñoly, as was first illustrated for him in a rough, free sketch that showed a fresh box over a contoured landscape. With his death, the inspiration for this design will remain a question of speculation forever, although in 1957 in Milwauke it will be similar to Eero Saarinen’s Memorial Center, and with an unobstructed memorial for the Uruguayan Stateman José Batlle Y Ordóñez, who designed in 1989 by the artist Jorge Oteza and architect José Batlle Y Ordóñe became.

“It was the privilege of a life for us to lead my father’s poetic and visionary design for the national Medal of Honor Museum to its final realization,” said Román Viñoly, now a partner in the company.

The majority of the 102,000 square meter area of ​​the museum is located under the increased gallery block, which is trapped in a grass landscape located by MPFP from New York and looks over Mark Holtz Lake and Richard Greene Linear Park.

Since Arlington only has limited public transit options, most visitors travel to the museum by car. It seems to be a missed opportunity that a city was selected for the project without adequate access to the mass transit. From an adjacent parking lot, visitors become a wide ramp to the rotunda of honor, a semicircular lobby, Himmlit. The ringing that the room is a frieze made of gold-painted steel plates that are beaten with the names of the 3,528 (and count) medal of the honorary receiver. Public, pedagogical and administrative rooms are equipped from the lobby, including a library, a theater with 260 seats, a café, a gift shop, an event room and a “management institute”, which is operated by the Museum Foundation.

The structural system, which keeps the floating box in the air, is dramatically unveiled in the lobby, which is pierced by five conical columns, each consisting of a series of concrete sections in front of the caste, which are stacked on top of each other, as in the ring cart of a child. The pillars represent the military branches (army, marine, air force, marines, coast guard); The Space Force, which was created after the denomination of the original design, is devoted to a circular oculus that cuts the exhibition block and gives the lobby natural light. Structural engineering takes place by the company Schlaich Bergermann partner.

Visitors access the exhibition hall either through two exposed spiral stairs (one for climbing, one for climbing) or a slowly rising elevator that is rising with glass change. “It enables reflection on what you will see when you pierce the box,” says Komati.

What visitors will find is a darkened, pillar-free space with black walls and gray-shaped terrazzo foot floors-a reasonable, strict space to tell the history of the award, which was created by the congress during the civil war to honor those who have exhibited the “galantry in action”. The first cohorts included Willie Johnston, who received honor for service as a drummer during the Peninsula campaign of 1862 when he was only 11 years old.

The installation of G&A in New York is in the stories of the award winners and tells them uncomplicated and politically neutral. The only great artifact is a bell-1h-1h Irokois helicopter (better known as Huey), which is used as a medical transport during the Vietnam War. What could easily go into a Jingoist celebration of American militarism adheres to the bravery and victim of his topics.

This service is to be remembered by this service, especially at a moment when the Department of Veterans Affairs is exposed to profound cuts in its budget. The Museum created by the non -profit National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation is independent of the federal government.

“War is not about medals,” says a prominent statement by SGT. William Shemin, who posthumously received the medal for service in the army in the First World War. “I love my men. I love my country. It’s all that matters.”

The Medal of Honor Museum is an impressive recognition of these feelings that gives the courage and victims of those who have awarded them three -dimensional form.