dirigible

“Let’s Fly” exhibition, are striped, spotted, shaped like doughnuts and light up in the night sky like condensed, dirigible versions of Ugo Rondinone’s “Seven Magic Mountains” sculpture.

In 1915, Germany’s lighter-than-air dirigible balloons, called Zeppelins after their designer, Count Ferdinand Zeppelin, began nighttime bombing raids over southern England, causing widespread panic and killing or wounding several thousand people.

Striped balloons and plump golden dirigibles clustered in the center with baskets ready to receive parcels and packages.

Located just across Fairfax from where the airfield once stood, the eye-catching spherical building’s design is, according to my Times colleague Carolina Miranda, “inspired by the dirigibles that used to touch down in the area.”

The federal government began to hoard the gas 100 years ago to ensure supplies for military dirigibles and later, the space program.