Track the construction of ‘Lawn,’ the National Building Museum’s upcoming summer exhibit

Workers have begun installing an interactive exhibit at the National Building Museum called “Lawn,” described by museum officials as “a vast, sloping green space built on a scaffolding superstructure.” And before the exhibit opens July 4, people can view the day-by-day stages of its installation via a camera in the museum’s Great Hall from webcam provider EarthCam.

The museum and EarthCam have partnered in each of the past six years for the museum’s annual “Summer Block Party” displays. “Lawn” is being designed by New York-based studio LAB at Rockwell Group and will feature lounging areas and hammocks suspended from the Great Hall’s 100-foot ceiling. Recorded stories from celebrities and other speakers will play from speakers hidden in the hammocks, according to the museum. The storytellers include:

Bette Midler, Award-winning actress and singer, and founder of New York Restoration Project

Venus Williams, tennis champion, entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author, philanthropist and founder and CEO of V Starr Interiors and EleVen by Venus Williams

Whoopi Goldberg, Award-winning actress, comedian, author, and moderator of ABC’s The View

Norman Lear, WWII Combat Veteran, award-winning writer and producer of television and film, and founder of People For the American Way

Susan Stamberg, Award-winning journalist and special correspondent for NPR

José Andrés, chef/owner of ThinkFoodGroup and founder of World Central Kitchen

Joel Grey, actor, singer, dancer, director, and photographer

Phylicia Rashad, actor and director

Seth Hurwitz, owner of I.M.P, the 9:30 Club, and The Anthem, and operator of Merriweather Post Pavilion and Lincoln Theatre

Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group and Founder of Shake Shack

Judah Friedlander, stand-up comedian (America Is the Greatest Country in the United States on Netflix), actor, and author

Edward Lee, chef/owner of 610 Magnolia, MilkWood and Whiskey Dry in Louisville, KY and Culinary Director for Succotash in National Harbor, Maryland and Penn Quarter; and winner of a 2019 James Beard Foundation Award for Writing

Paola Antonelli, senior curator of Architecture & Design and director of research and development at the Museum of Modern Art

David Rockwell, founder and president of Rockwell Group

U.S. sound-design firm Yessian Music is also working with Rockwell Group on surrounding the lawn “in a soundscape of distilled audio elements that evoke time spent outdoors on a warm summer day crickets chirping, bees buzzing, a lawnmower whirring in the distance,” the Building Museum explained in release Tuesday. Visitors will be able to play games like croquet, bocce ball, and dominoes, and climb to the top of a temporary “scaffolding tower.”

National Building Museum/LAB at Rockwell Group

In addition, there will be an augmented-reality game in which people can collect fireflies in the space. “Lawn” is scheduled to run through September 2. You can see more photos from the ongoing installation below. (An eventual time-lapse movie is planned, EarthCam notes.)

National Building Museum/EarthCam

National Building Museum/EarthCam

National Building Museum/EarthCam