Every presidential election throws Washington DC into demographic flux. Politics aside, though, the city is also welcoming young families and graduates by the trainload as it gradually repositions itself as a great all-rounder of a place. With breakneck gentrification and a foodie revolution introducing Washingtonians to New York-style living, you’d think the city fabric would be turning itself inside out.
Yet it’s remarkably difficult to get things built here. Red tape is a fact of life, as are conservative old-timers galvanised against change. It took a new baseball franchise to kickstart the redevelopment of the crumbling Navy Yards, and David Adjaye’s lauded National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened last year, was a century in the making.
In a bureaucratic city characterised by government office space, local designer/developer Brook Rose saw potential in a rare landmark warehouse once used to manufactured some of the first rotary gyrocopter engines. Meanwhile, New York architect Steven Holl’s Obama-era infrastructure project will open in much less certain times, no less for the arts. Two blocks south of the National Mall, Detroit-based SmithGroupJJR has transformed a landmark transport warehouse into a museum to rival the Smithsonians in splendour.
What does go up tends to be overwhelmed with mirrored glass. Yet there are exceptions. While planners have greenlit a redesign of Constitutional Gardens by Rogers Partners and PWP, as well as a delicate glass office complex by REX Architecture, there have been a handful of exemplary projects come to fruition.
Museum of the Bible, SmithGroupJJR, opening November 2017: Conceived to house some 40,000 biblical artefacts, one for each square metre of space, the non-sectarian Museum of the Bible launches later this year, opening at the original train portal, decorated, fittingly, in stained glass displaying a portion of the Great Isaiah Scroll
Museum of the Bible, SmithGroupJJR, opening November 2017: Conceived to house some 40,000 biblical artefacts, one for each square metre of space, the non-sectarian Museum of the Bible launches later this year, opening at the original train portal, decorated, fittingly, in stained glass displaying a portion of the Great Isaiah Scroll
Museum of the Bible, SmithGroupJJR, opening November 2017: Jerusalem-stone columns punctuate the 12m-high flatiron, where much of the collection of scriptures, stones and antiquities sit beneath a backlit mock-fresco ceiling. Further up a floating stairwell, a two-storey rooftop addition blanketed in a glass curtain wall houses a theatre and ballroom with views over the Capitol
Museum of the Bible, SmithGroupJJR, opening November 2017: Jerusalem-stone columns punctuate the 12m-high flatiron, where much of the collection of scriptures, stones and antiquities sit beneath a backlit mock-fresco ceiling. Further up a floating stairwell, a two-storey rooftop addition blanketed in a glass curtain wall houses a theatre and ballroom with views over the Capitol
Rosedale Residence, Kube Architecture, 2017: Let the Obamas have Kalorama, with all its media scrutiny and hopped-up security. Two miles northwest, on the last available plot of a 280-year-old heritage area, Kube Architecture has built a 600 sq m house bordering three acres of parkland and literal white-picket fences
Rosedale Residence, Kube Architecture, 2017: Let the Obamas have Kalorama, with all its media scrutiny and hopped-up security. Two miles northwest, on the last available plot of a 280-year-old heritage area, Kube Architecture has built a 600 sq m house bordering three acres of parkland and literal white-picket fences
