It depends on who you’re protecting yourself against, says a public health expert.

With the federal government expected to enact spending cuts in the near future, D.C. is preparing for life outside of the federal bubble.

The “bubble” set to be installed next year at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has a new name: The Bloomberg Balloon, following a major gift from Bloomberg LP.

It appears as if the Hirshhorn Museum’s large, temporary, inflatable special event “bubble” needs a cash infusion to become a reality.

Courtesy Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Even though the proposed bubble at the Hirshhorn Museum hasn’t yet inflated yet (latest plans for inflation are October 2012) it has won a progressive architecture award from the Architect, the magazine of the American Institute of Architects. The controversial bubble, designed by New York firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, earned praise from the magazine for its playful and vibrant nature. Says the magazine: Both installation and building, the…

The large, temporary, inflatable bubble which the Hirshhorn Museum is planning on erecting for special events has taken another step forward. Speaking at a conference yesterday, Richard Koshalek, the Museum’s director, said that the bubble will be pumped up inside the Museum’s central plaza by October 2012, according to a report on the American Society of Landscape Architect blog The Dirt.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro Plans to erect a temporary inflatable event space through the middle of the Hirshhorn Museum are moving forward, according to a news release from the Smithsonian Institution. The Hirshhorn has received “supportive comments” from the National Capital Planning Commission for the seasonal bubble, which would be installed twice a year for special events, and the Commission of Fine Arts approved the concept in February. News of the museum’s inflated ambitions…

Courtesy Diller Scofidio + Renfro Washington arts watchers have been whispering and wondering since The New York Times first reported earlier this week that the Hirshhorn Museum was developing plans to create a 145-foot-tall temporary, inflatable event space. The bubble-like structure (see more images here), conceived by New York design firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, would supposedly be erected twice a year for special events, and the most intriguing aspects of the project were…

Earlier today, we told you about plans to create a whimsical temporary event space in the form of a massive bubble through and around the donut hole-like center of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Since then, we’ve managed to obtain some more images of the proposed design, which has been conceived by New York architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The firm has been involved in the design of several high profile cultural institutions,…

Via Atrios, this little geographically motivated blog spat between Ben Adler at TAPPED and Brian Beutler, about whether New York or California has a better environmental record, misses the more important point: This study shows that it’s Washington, DC that actually has the lowest per capita gasoline consumption of any place in the country, by an impressively wide margin. We’ve certainly explored issues related to the relative greenness of densely populated urban environments, compared…