Local Projects

Our client Edward F. O'Keefe shares a peek at the story and structure of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in the Badlands of #NorthDakota on Good Morning America. We'll see you in Medora for the opening of the library at Theodore Roosevelt National Park this summer!

There’s often a gap between the initial brief and the deeper question beneath it. Brook Anderson writes about the journey to close that gap at Miami Dade College’s Freedom Tower—and what happens when institutional story and architectural decisions are woven together.

Does the idea of giving customers a behind-the-scenes look at your R&D feel a little…revealing? We get it. But it's often the best way to offer a novel experience that builds trust with customers. Local Projects is making a triumphant return to the stage at #GACEP, the world's premier event for Customer Experience pros, to share how to develop a narrative engine for innovation and R&D at your experience center. Our session will be helmed by Creative Director Stephen Baker, alongside Nathan Pisik of AMD, Patrick McMahon of the Gates Foundation, and Phillip Tomlinson of Philips. We'll see you in Santa Clara, #GACEP2026! 

“We have nothing to fear from the facts.” So says Marland Buckner, CEO of the Shockoe Institute, a new national org dedicated to revealing the enduring impact of racial slavery on our shared American experience, and our client. Today, we open the Institute's signature exhibit, "Expanding Freedom", a new exhibit that traces the evolution and enduring impact of racial slavery, and helps visitors understand and reframe this history's impact on our current moment.  It’s a reckoning with our shared history, a reframing of a present built around enormous wealth and economic disparity, and a wish for a future led by groups like the Shockoe Institute that invite us to learn, reflect, and act to create solutions that improve our civic life and economic opportunity. Come visit Expanding Freedom starting next week at Richmond’s Main Street Station located in Shockoe Bottom, a neighborhood that was once an epicenter of domestic slave trade, and now an epicenter of our search for a freer future. 

In nature and across cultures, camouflage acts as a system designed to deceive and disguise. We built Camouflage: Designed to Deceive as a design system — turning one of pop culture's most familiar patterns into a recognizable extension of the International Spy Museum's already well-established brand. As the ever-astute Nate Berg explains in Fast Company, “the exhibition goes beyond battlefields and spycraft to show how camouflage has entered art, pop culture, and fashion.” Check out Nate’s article here: https://bit.ly/4b3arOd

The National Public Housing Museum is one of the top 3 new museums in the country! USA TODAY’s editors get together annually to choose ten new museums to honor, and then put the top honors up to public vote, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to see this small but deserving museum at the top of the list. Over 18 years in the making, the Museum shares the success story of public housing in post-WWII America and beyond, inside the only surviving building of the historic Jane Addams Home on Chicago's Near West Side. https://lnkd.in/g4TRJuMM

Last week, Stephen Baker and Kate Watson-Cole took the Freund Visiting Designer Lecture stage at WashU Sam Fox School with one idea: the best designed experiences don’t impress visitors—they transform them. They answered questions from our engaged audience, including friends from the Saint Louis Science Center and Mackey Mitchell Architects, had the opportunity to review amazing student work through studio visits, and paid a visit to Wash U’s Kemper Art Museum at WashU to discuss how the team is rethinking museum education. Thanks to Professor Jonathan Hanahan and the team at Sam Fox School for their hospitality! #WashU #WUSTL #SamFox Photos: Luiz Ludwig

Attending Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums' Building Museums this week? Connect with Alice Walker, our Executive Director of New Business and Marketing, as she heads down to Baltimore along with hundreds of leaders from across the cultural sector. Leave us a comment if you’d like to book a time to chat, or reach out to us at hello@localprojects.com #BuildingMuseums2026 #MuseumInnovation #MuseumProfessionals #ConferenceLearning

Look twice. Then look again. Camouflage: Designed to Deceive—our special exhibition for the International Spy Museum—is opening this week! The exhibition unfolds across four immersive galleries, tracing camo's roots in animal mimicry through its strategic evolution during World War II to today’s digital conflicts, where hiding in plain sight has become both an art and a necessity. These themes are brought to life by large-scale physical scenography, artifacts, and examples of real camouflage, including: – A super-sized model of a “dazzle ship,” a fascinating nautical experiment from the WWI-era, along with models of each dazzle ship, borrowed from the Imperial War Museum’s collection – Mannequins sporting camouflage uniforms used from China to Ukraine, the Syrian desert to the Himalayan Mountains – A monumental media piece that challenges visitors to spot camouflaged soldiers hidden in various environments, including a jungle, desert, and snowy mountain peak. If you’re in Washington, DC, tickets are available here: https://bit.ly/46ymm3R. Thanks to our collaborators at Cortina Productions & Bridgewater Studio who helped bring the exhibit to life. #SpyCamo #SpyMuseum #NewExhibit #WashingtonDC

How do you create experiences that actually change people, not just entertain them? Our Creative Director Stephen Baker and Executive Strategy Director Kate Watson-Cole are heading toWashU Sam Fox School as this year's Freund Visiting Designer lecturers. They'll unpack how Local Projects builds for action, feeling, and memory, and why we believe the only work that matters is work that transforms. The lecture is free and open to the public, so if you're in STL, join us at 11:30am on Thursday, February 26, 2026 at Kuehner Court, Weil Hall! #washu #design #lecture