National World War II Museum

Overview

Formerly known as the D-Day Museum, The National World War II Museum in New Orleans is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution and has been designated by Congress as the official World War II museum for the United States. Museum visitors have access to over 80,000 square feet of interactive and interpretive exhibits, including a guided tour through the museum's central green space labeled the “Path to Victory.” The expanded museum covers all of the theaters and services that played a role in World War II and creates a national center for research on the war.

We provided structural design services to Voorsanger Mathes LLC for the museum's multiple-building expansion - which quadrupled the size of the original museum.   

Highlights

• To assist in providing visual continuity and weather protection for the "Path to Victory," we designed the museum's signature feature - a floating fabric canopy - that unifies the individual elements with a large-scale, readily recognizable image for a national museum.
• The 150-foot-tall, 484-foot-long, 131-foot-wide steel space truss canopy structure is partially covered with translucent fabric panels and provides shade and lighting to the parade ground underneath.
• Galleries and exhibits feature macro displays, including tanks, airplanes, jeeps and other vintage vehicles, and a 400- seat Dome theater that shows documentaries and history-themed films, with a signature film on World War II that employs advanced 4-D format and immersion technologies.
• The museum’s Center for the Study of the American Spirit is its intellectual core. The three-story, 42,000-squarefoot research center houses the museum’s collection of library and archival materials, including one of the nation’s most significant collections of oral histories, rare archival film footage and documents on the American experience in the war.