WASHINGTON, D.C. – Beneath the headquarters of the National Geographic Society, a maze of drill rigs, steel piles, and dust gave way to one of the most ambitious cultural construction projects underway in the nation’s capital: the Museum of Exploration. Led by HITT Contracting, the project is transforming National Geographic’s campus into a dynamic public destination—while uniting four historic buildings into a single, modern museum complex.
The new space, blocks from the White House, will feature a reimagined entrance at 16th and M Streets NW, opening to a striking new pavilion and a courtyard designed for immersive projection shows. But bringing this vision to life has been a feat of engineering, patience, and precision.
Crews began with deep foundation work, threading 42 steel-cased micropiles under tight conditions. Each casing was lowered in three-foot sections, pressure-grouted for stability, and installed while campus employees continued their work above.
“It was very slow, very dirty,” said Joe Kmiecinski, vice president of site operations at HITT Contracting. “It was drilling through soil and then drilling through rock, using air to remove all the rock, all the dust and everything that’s associated with that.”
The construction is as much about preservation as innovation. The new museum stitches together four buildings, some more than a century old, including three listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“We’re building in between four different existing buildings and on top of another. You could call it a building that kind of ties them all together,” explained Ryan Sokoloski, senior director of building operations at National Geographic Society. “They all have different structural components to them. So, trying to wed all of those together from the below grade phase and up has certainly been a challenge.”
“There’s so much attention,” added John Boyer, vice president at National Geographic Society. “Both from a creative detail that [architecture firm] Hickok Cole did, but also for HITT in the detail of the design to both respect and minimize the impact to those buildings so that they seamlessly can integrate.”
Unlike typical large-scale projects, the National Geographic campus never closed during construction. Employees worked in offices while walls were demolished and rebuilt around them.
“That is the biggest challenge,” Boyer noted. “To do all this work, combine these four buildings, and do it while we’re never closed. We never shut down this campus.”
To make that possible, HITT drafted more than 500 detailed methods of procedure (MOPs), carefully coordinating each move.
“We meet with Nat Geo every single day to look at what we’re doing and where we’re going to be and what we’re going to be impacting,” Kmiecinski said. “We try to do the best to minimize the noise and the dust as much as we can.”
At the heart of the new museum is a droplet-shaped ceiling that radiates outward, drawing visitors’ eyes to the centerpiece Oculus skylight.
“The ceiling is representative of a droplet of water and the ripples that are coming out,” said Jason Wright, principal and director of technical operations at Hickok Cole. “It allows the light to come down into the space. Adding the skylight certainly brings daylight into the space to enliven the pavilion.”
Prefabricated components were critical to assembling this complex feature, Sokoloski said, with everything from acoustical ceilings to millwork fabricated offsite before integration.
The project incorporates sustainable design solutions, including a 45,000-gallon cistern in the lowest parking level to capture rainwater for irrigation and graywater reuse. Digital modeling and design-assist strategies streamlined the integration of mechanical, electrical, and structural systems across the multi-building campus.
As construction nears completion, crews are finishing terrazzo floors, wood ceilings, custom millwork, and bathrooms inside the museum. Outside, the courtyard is nearly ready for evening projection shows designed to bring exploration stories to life.
“We just tiptoed through a lot of complicated demolition and rebuilt while it’s occupied,” Kmiecinski said. “Just looking at everything two and three times.”
The Museum of Exploration is slated to open in 2026, offering visitors an immersive environment where architecture, history, and storytelling converge—fitting for an institution that has spent more than a century chronicling the world’s greatest journeys.
Originally reported by Sebastian Obando in Construction Dive.
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