For more than four decades, the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, has stood at the intersection of architecture, design, engineering, urban planning, and public life. Housed in the historic Pension Building, a colossal 19th-century red-brick structure famous for its soaring Great Hall and massive Corinthian columns, it is one of the city’s grandest civic spaces. The Museum inspires curiosity about the world we design and build through exhibitions, programs, education, and advocacy.

A team led by Pentagram partner Michael Gericke created a visual identity system that expresses its broad mission, connects with wider audiences, and positions it clearly among the leading cultural institutions in Washington, DC, the United States, and abroad.

Pentagram collaborated closely with the Museum’s president and executive director, Aileen Fuchs, and the institution’s leadership team on the project.

The Museum’s mission is to inspire curiosity about the built environment, and its vision extends to engaging visitors in understanding how places and cities are shaped, and how the built world is made today. It operates as a storyteller, a thought leader, and a national institution for the building and design communities.

At the same time, the Museum is differentiating itself within the cultural landscape, locally and internationally, alongside institutions such as the National Gallery of Art, the Cooper Hewitt, MoMA, and architecture and design museums worldwide. 

The Museum’s annual Honor Award and Vincent Scully Prize celebrate organizations and individuals whose work has shaped the built environment through design excellence, innovation, and leadership. They underscore the institution’s role as a national platform for recognizing their influence across architecture, design, engineering, construction, and development.

“The identity is grounded in a clear, distilled expression of purpose: the world we design and build,” says Gericke. This phrase captures the Museum’s unique position between professional practice and public experience, linking design, architecture, building materials, and construction to everyday life, education, and culture. 

The new visual identity is built from a small set of strong foundational elements: the Museum’s wordmark, color palette, typography, graphic forms, and imagery. Each component was designed to be bold, flexible, and highly legible across print, digital, environmental, and social platforms.

“The wordmark is architectural in character, reflecting the geometry of the Pension Building’s historic façade and interior,” says Gericke. Condensed and vertically proportioned letterforms create a distinct presence that performs equally well at monumental and small sizes. The system allows the Museum’s full name to serve as both the logo and the headline, reinforcing recognition, approachability, and confidence.

Typography plays a central role in shaping the Museum’s visual voice, balancing substance with approachability and reinforcing its educational and civic mission. An elegant serif typeface echoes exterior architectural details and the capitals of the four enormous columns in the Great Hall.

A refined color palette anchors the identity, using a rich red derived from the building’s iconic brick exterior.

The identity was designed to operate seamlessly across every public-facing touchpoint. On the Museum’s website, publications, and digital platforms, it brings coherence to a wide range of content, from exhibitions and events to educational tools and public programs. The new system organizes information with clarity, while giving prominence to imagery, storytelling, and the institution’s broad range of events.

“We aim to inspire visitors to look at the world we design and build through new eyes, using storytelling, exhibitions, and events that make our many subjects engaging, fun, and meaningful,” says Aileen Fuchs, the Museum’s president and executive director.