NHM Commons Museum Wing and Community Hub / Frederick Fisher and Partners

The NHM Commons project is the Museum's new wing and a community hub, comprising approximately 75,000 square feet of new construction, renovated space, and landscaping on the west end of the Museum that faces Exposition Park and the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. NHM Commons will serve as both a destination and a gateway to the Museum and builds on NHM's unique outside-inside experience. It expands the existing main south entrance and is designed to offer an inviting, transparent "front porch" to the NHM campus, create a free welcome center, provide a new flexible theater and multipurpose space, increase exhibition spaces, and expand NHM's broad-based community programming. The Welcome Center provides orientation, ticketing, close-up views of a new sauropod dinosaur skeleton named Gnatalie, a mural by Barbara Carrasco, and views into the Park. In addition to linking the entrance plaza, new café, welcome center, and theater with the existing museum, NHM Commons enhances connections with institutions across Exposition Park.