The designers behind the High Line have swapped land for water in a new installation at the National Building Museum in Washington DC.

Landscape architects James Corner Field Operations have created an underwater world of glacial ice fields inside the 19th-century building’s Great Hall.

The installation – called Icebergs – is part of the museum’s annual Summer Block Party, and follows on from last year’s beach landscape by Snarkitecture.

‘Such a world is both beautiful and ominous given our current epoch of climate change, ice melt and rising seas,’ says James Corner, founder and director of Field Operations.

‘The installation creates an ambient field of texture, movement and interaction, as in an unfolding landscape of multiples, distinct from a static single object.’

Taking up 12,540 sq ft of the museum’s hall, the aquatic landscape comprises 30 polyhedrons ranging from 16 ft to 56 ft. The tallest ‘iceberg’ reaches 56 ft – level with the space’s third-storey balcony – and has a viewing platform at its peak. Inside the ‘underwater’ setting are also caverns, grottoes, slides and triangular-shaped bean bags.

The arctic surrounds are a deliberately contrast to the searing temperatures outside.

Icebergs will run until 5 September. Tickets cost $16.

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