Obama Cool in the Age of Insecurity

If the good citizens of Annapolis ever decide to invade the District of Columbia, drunk, chewing on unlit cigars and armed to the teeth, they will make it no further than 99 New York Avenue, the fortress headquarters of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms. But until that day, the ATF building will remain the worst building in Washington D.C.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the federal government redoubled its efforts, begun after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building, to make sensitive government buildings more secure. In the fifteen years since Oklahoma City, bollards, planters, walls, and retractable security gates have replaced park benches, eliminated landscaping, and narrowed sidewalks around most federal buildings in Washington and around the nation. For most of our important ceremonial buildings, the GSA has cleverly concealed these security measures within the architecture. For instance, few visitors to Washington would ever guess that the low wall around the Washington Monument is the last line of defense against a dump truck packed with explosives.

But even in Washington, the ATF Headquarters, designed by Israeli/Canadian/American architect Moshe Safdie and completed in 2008, breaks new and disturbing ground for architectural insecurity. Driving along New York Avenue (because nobody would ever want to walk near this building) one is arrested by the colossal barricade trying desperately to fill up the block. The ATF offices cower on the south side of the site away from New York Avenue, like a dog expecting to be kicked. In between the barricade and the building is a lovely no-mans-land. Dead end steps lead down from New York Avenue into this secret garden as if the garden had originally been intended as public refuge from the traffic noise of New York Avenue only to be walled off at the last moment by neurotic security consultants.

On the south and east sides of the site, just steps from the New York Avenue Metro station, gateway to the burgeoning NoMa neighborhood, the bulk of the building is hidden behind a single-story security cordon, making 2nd street feel like an alley where a few of the cordon's undistinguished storefronts have been turned over to retail. But these spaces feel like they've been banished from the kingdom, left to live as undesirables outside the castle walls. The only unobstructed view of the actual office building is from the narrow N Street side, but even here the building is sequestered from the street by bollards and planters and too-tall walls and even taller fences and a pointless pergola.

The dead end steps, the DMZ garden, the inhospitable retail, the planters and bollards and pergola--on all sides this is an unremarkable office building subsumed by architectural paranoia, dressed up with empty urban gestures. So why is this building in Washington DC at all? Why not exile it to a remote site outside the beltway?

This was the strategy of the American Consulate in Istanbul, the first of the post 9/11 embassies, which New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman dubbed the place Where Birds Don't Fly. The suburban embassy is too hard a target for terrorists to bother with, but more to the point, its very inaccessibility has made it a symbol not of our highest values but our worst fears. The best that can be said of the Istanbul Consulate is that it is not in Istanbul at all, but far away from anyplace that matters, like the crazy aunt in the attic. But in Washington DC, the ATF has stumbled out onto the front porch, wearing nothing but a top hat and tutu, and is screaming at the neighbors about alien invasions.
Fortunately there is prescription for this architectural nervous disorder: Philadelphia architects', Kieran/Timerlake’s design for the new American Embassy in London. Perched atop a gently sloping berm and surrounded by a reflecting pool, the glass cube, swathed in bubble wrap, is alighted on an open colonnade at street level. The design for the new American Embassy is distinctly urbane and utterly unflappable: Obama cool. Posed conspicuously on the south bank of the Thames, surround by a decidedly urban neighborhood of office buildings, this building is not afraid of the crowds. It will be the life of the party. Home to the "High-Tech-Modern Architects," Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, London is a showcase of technological innovation in architecture.

But even in such sophisticated company, Kieran/Timberlake's design stands out. The bubble wrap insulates and regulates sunlight and features next-generation "thin film" photovoltaics, a technology pioneered in the United States. But more important than the transparent skin, is the openness at the street. The first floor colonnade is a stylish storefront, taking its cues from the transparent Apple Stores, drawing in shoppers from the marketplace of ideas. Openness, transparency, technology: these are the values that America's buildings should symbolize around the world, and the values that should inform our federal buildings here at home. The ATF building will go down as one of the starkest expressions of a dark age in American federal architecture, but there is light on the horizon.

Designing the Mall's Next Museum

DCmud has obtained a list of architects now vying to design the newest addition to the Mall, and to the Smithsonian's downtown repertoire - the National Museum of African-American History and Culture (NMAAHC), a 350,000 square foot edifice slated for construction at 15^th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW. According to Museum Director Lonnie Bunch, Washington DC's newest museum will "help all Americans see just how central African American history is for all of us."

At present, there is no shortage of architects willing to take a shot at designing for what is, essentially, one the last "vacant" parcels abutting the National Mall - and also one of the closest to the Washington Monument. Current bidders on the $300 million project include Diller Scofidio and Renfro, Devrouax and Purnell Architects, Moshe Safdie and Associates, The Freelon Group, Pei Cobb Freed and Partners, Foster and Partners and Moody Nolan Inc. There is no word on when a final selection will be made, but construction is currently slated to begin in February (which also happens to be Black History Month) 2012.

Those interested in scoping out the NMAAHC’s exhibits in 2009, however, will have to hit the road; the museum’s inaugural exhibition, Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits, will travel the country until work on its permanent exhibition space is complete. The collection is currently on display in Detroit, with future bookings planned for San Francisco, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chicago and Cincinnati all the way through 2011.

The museum was made possible by legislation signed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2003. The same act charted the museum under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution, and it was that body’s Board of Regents that selected the 5-acre site bounded by Constitution Avenue, Madison Drive and 14^th and 15^th Streets, NW to be home of the first national museum “devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life.” Having already completed a preliminary Environmental Impact analysis, the Smithsonian is currently undertaking what it labels as the “architectural programming phase” of development, during which the space and system requirements integral to a fully functioning public institution, such as the NMAAHC, will be established, and then relayed to the prospective architects for inclusion in their designs.

Washington DC real estate development news

Building Peace on the National Mall

Construction of the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), is well under way at Constitution Avenue and 23^rd Street, NW – the so-called "war and peace corner" of the National Mall. Once a simply a surface parking lot for the neighboring Naval Potomac Annex, the site is due to be reborn as $185 million, LEED- certified testament to the United States' "commitment to building peace around the world."

The new 5-story white glass edifice will serve as the new headquarters for the USIP – a congressionally funded think tank dedicated to resolving international conflicts and increasing “peacebuilding capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide” – in addition to serving a bevy educational purposes for the public at the large. The latter will be served by a 20,000 square foot Public Education Center for visitors that will count a “Peace Lab” and theatre sponsored by the Chevron Corporation among its publicly accessible features. These will be joined by a conference center that is planned to include a 230 seat auditorium, a 45 seat amphitheater and 8 meeting rooms, as well as a public plaza and garden in the Institute’s inner courtyard. The USIP’s three uppermost floors will house office space for the Institute’s 200 or so employees and rotating roster of visiting researchers.

Moshe Safdie and Associates was selected as architects, following a nationwide design competition. Composed of “three distinct sections linked together by atriums covered by large-span undulating roofs,” the new USIP will be clearly visible from the nearby Lincoln Memorial, as well the adjacent Korean War and Vietnam Veterans Memorials (the latter of which has too been singled out by Congress for a significant expansion).

A ceremonial groundbreaking for the new facility took place this past June, with both then President George W. Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in attendance. The project boasted bipartisan support in Congress as well - the body that allowed now disgraced former Alaska Senator and then-Senate Appropriations Chairman, Ted Stevens, to allot $100 million in funds for the development. USIP is currently in the midst of seeking approximately $6 million more in private donations – a quarter of which was met in September by the BP America Foundation.

USIP has been represented throughout the development process by local developer John Stranix, who is also currently spearheading efforts to redevelop the District’s Parkside Additions public housing project. Clark Construction is serving as general contractor on the project (a webcam of their progress at the site is available here). The project is expected to open in the fall of 2010.

Navy Makes Way for Peace on the Mall

A new building with a lighted, wing-like roof will soon loom over the Capital Mall near the Lincoln Memorial, if recently submitted designs are approved. The United States Institute for Peace (USIP) received preliminary approval by the National Capital Planning Commission last week for plans to build its headquarters at 23rd and Constitution Avenue, NW, conditioned on the building's aesthetic deferral to the Lincoln Memorial one block to the south. Designed by Moshe Safdie of Massachusetts, the Institute would stand 118 feet at its highest point - about 10 stories - though grading around the site will diminish the scale of the project, with a precast concrete skin and capped by a series of "undulating spherical and toroidal segments" made of white translucent glass that will be lighted after dark. The Federal Government has appropriated $99.2m for development on the southern corner of the Naval Potomac Annex, which currently uses the space for parking, in exchange USIP will provide 140 garage parking spaces to the Navy. The Commission on Fine Arts has already approved the concept, but several commissioners voiced strong concern about the lighting overshadowing the monuments or overwhelming the Mall.