Steven Holl Architects unveils the REACH at Kennedy Center in Washington
![Grey buildings at top of grass hill](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/vE52TsHLvBXtsi7CcVAUFP-415-80.jpg)
The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts seeks to strengthen its position as a key cultural hub for the city of Washington, D.C., with the opening of a new expansion by Steven Holl Architects (SHA) with BNIM. Dubbed the REACH – as it aims to ‘renew, experience, activate, create, and honour' John F. Kennedy’s memory – the addition provides the Kennedy Center with 72,000 sq ft of extra interior space in the form of much-needed rehearsal studios and informal, intimate performance venues.
Three pavilions rise above the two sub-grade levels, with a publicly accessible lawn, Ginkgo grove and reflecting pool between them, designed by Hollander Design Landscape Architects, to reflect choreographed seasonality. A new bridge extends the REACH’s metaphor across Rock Creek Parkway, drawing pedestrians into the 4.6-acre campus to encourage citywide exposure to the arts.
The bridge is part of an effort to increase accessibility to the challenging Kennedy Center site, which is bordered on three sides by a highway, an on-ramp, and a parkway overlooking the Potomac River. Yet for all of that potential disruption, combined with flight traffic in and out of Washington’s Reagan National Airport, the riverside pavilions offer scenic views uninterrupted by outside noise.
Within several of the performance and rehearsal spaces, a new form of acoustic wall, which SHA calls ‘crinkle concrete', embeds peaks and valleys into the wall surfaces to minimize parallel surfaces that would cause unwelcome echoes. Developed in-house by architects Chris McVoy and Garrick Ambrose, this type of concrete relies on pounded metal to be coated in rubber, which then serves as the formwork for the concrete walls – all of which are also structural, making them both performative and performance friendly.
From the original, 1971 Edward Durrell Stone building, visitors to the REACH will enter a welcome pavilion. Its double-height lobby reduces to a low-ceilinged hall before releasing into a soaring space that Steven Holl describes as the Skylight pavilion, which features a Carlo Scarpa-esque moment in its northwest corner, and a southern wall that curves inward as it descends, meeting the ground with glass that follows the same bend.
‘The experiential aspect kind of overrides the intellectual, because a five-year-old needs to be able to walk into a building — like a five-year-old can listen to a piece of music — and become inspired by it', Holl says. ‘My ideas about the phenomenological aspect of architecture have always been a theoretical backbone of my work. And so I'm very proud that this project unifies all those things, but in a very much more important site and circumstance than I've ever worked'.
The Kennedy Center plans to open the REACH with a 16-day arts festival in September, featuring performances by local singers, dancers, musicians, and comedians. Many of these and future shows will be simulcast via projection onto the exterior of one of the pavilions, welcoming members of the public to become an impromptu audience in the REACH’s new outdoor venue.
INFORMATION
For more information visit the Steven Holl Architects website
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
-
Feel at home at Auberge, Château La Coste's new inn for culture lovers
Auberge La Coste sits at the heart of the art-filled estate, minutes away from the joyful town of Aix-en-Provence
By Harriet Thorpe Published
-
This Nova Lima apartment is a Brazilian family oasis with striking Minas Gerais views
A Nova Lima apartment designed by Jacobsen Arquitetura celebrates its long, natural Minas Gerais vistas
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Commune’s sustainable personal care products look ‘quite unlike anything else’
Commune’s Somerset-made products stand out in the sustainable skincare crowd. Madeleine Rothery speaks with the brand’s co-founders Kate Neal and Rémi Paringaux
By Madeleine Rothery Published
-
IM Pei's Everson Museum of Art gets a modern makeover
The East Wing of the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY has been given a contemporary refresh by emerging Los Angeles studio MILLIØNS
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Black Modernism’s lesser-known, at-risk architecture gems gain a lifeline
Conserving Black Modernism announces vital funding to save and preserve overlooked and endangered buildings by African American architects and designers
By Bridget Downing Published
-
Step into the Blanton Museum of Art's reimagined public realm by Snøhetta in Austin
Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas is completed and reveals its reimagined public realm and plaza designed by Snøhetta
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
This New York Townhouse renovation is a lesson in contemporary minimalism
TenBerke’s carefully considered New York townhouse is the reimagining of a century-old Manhattan structure that reframes vertical living
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Visit The Frost House, a lesser-known modernist architecture marvel in Michigan City
The Frost House is a lesser-known midcentury architecture gem in Michigan City, Indiana; we took the tour as the property goes on the market
By Audrey Henderson Published
-
Broadway designer Scott Pask’s Arizona retreat is a scene-stealing discovery
Scott Pask invites us inside his Arizona retreat, nestled in the foothills overlooking Tucson – a place to reboot, recharge and commune with nature
By Michael Webb Published
-
Upstate New York retreat Ridge House evokes land art
Ridge House in upstate New York, the work of Brooklyn-based studio Worrell Yeung, is at one with the surrounding countryside
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Rafael de Cárdenas’ first ground-up project is a forever home with waterfront views and hidden treasures
Rafael de Cárdenas reveals his latest completed project in the Pacific Northwest, a family home of calming spaces that bleed the outside in, and ten years in the making
By Ellie Stathaki Published