In response to my post this morning critiquing the top six winners of the Eisenhower memorial competition, architect Francisco Ruiz sent me this email describing his proposal:
“I read with interest your comments on the ‘top six’ entries in the National Civic Art Counterproposals Eisenhower Memorial Competition. You are quite right in your observation that our submittal ‘is by far the most unique’ of the submittals. It is in fact the only one carefully and professionally related to the site and indeed to the overall geometry (both literal and as perceived historically in the legacy of the L’Enfant Plan). In that regard, I will provide a proper description of the urbanistic intentions / interventions employed in our Proposal:”
“The site is organized about two important Public Spaces, intended to be added to the roster of public spaced in Washington DC. “
“The first is, of course, the appropriately ‘formal’ and dignified ‘Eisenhower Plaza’, roughly circular in form (although a more accurate formal description would be ‘square in form’ with articulating exedras, intended to render it perceivably ‘circular’) is placed at the hitherto quite awkward confluence of the great Independence Avenue and the Maryland Street Axis, which of course bisects the overall site diagonally.”
“The carefully designed geometry of this Public Space gracefully resolves the crossing of these two Avenues, and creates a proper forum around which the Memorial organizes. Eisenhower Plaza is not designed as a ‘developer-ry’ ‘site contained feature’, rather on the model of Gabriel’s Place de la Concorde in Paris, it utilizes marble exedas / seats, a flagpole, sculpture and other similar features to extend its reach out to and to become an organic part of the City fabric, in the manner and language of the L’Enfant Plan. In so doing, Eisenhower Plaza becomes a Public space through which flow both Independence Avenue, and 4th Street. Now you may not be aware of this, as only the most knowledgeable and observant of the formal structure of the Capital City might be aware of this, but 4th Street constitutes an important de-facto ‘cross axis’ (i.e. an axis, as that of 16th Street, running perpendicularly to that of the Mall) which passes through Judiciary Square and to be terminated at the north by the old ‘Pensions Building’ (now the National Building Museum). It is on this axis, at the center line of the 4th Street right-of-way, that the part of the Memorial dedicated to the General Eisenhower is placed. This is a tall column over 70 feet in height, which will function not only as an a visual terminus to the 4th Street Axis, but as a ‘signal’ to visitors on the Mall, and in the vicinity of the National Gallery of the Memorial.”
“The second Public Space designed for the site is ‘Maryland Square’. In contrast to Eisenhower Plaza, which is designed for dignified contemplation and reflection, Maryland Square is designed as a compliment, casual and hospitable in nature, defined by appropriately scaled mixed use (office and residential) buildings and served at its edges by cafes, and small scaled-retail. Maryland Square is less ‘public’, more inward turning, and more a part of the ‘neighbourhood’ urban fabric, the ‘poche’, as it were (to use a Beaux Arts Planning term) existing to anchor, defer to and define Public Spaces of a higher order (in this case Eisenhower Plaza).”
“It has to be noted by anyone contemplating a plan for this site and for the Memorial, that our Proposal devotes approximately one third of the available (quite large) one block parcel to the Memorial itself. This is more than suffucient, and actually results in a work of superior, more human, less ’empty’ scale.”
“In so doing, it also identifies the bulk of the parcel, a good two thirds of it, for private sector development, as described. This will permit the sale or lease of quite valuable Downtown Washington real estate for prescribed and carefully controlled development, the proceeds of which intended to defray in part, if not in whole, the costs of realizing the Memorial itself. This is sort of intelligence is not to be overlooked at any time, but especially at a challenging time of ongoing Budget Austerity.”
“The Memorial itself, has been quite carefully designed to take the form of Classical Pavillions, Seats, Sculpture, Monumental Column all quite carefully arranged in a dynamic symmetry around the perimeter of the carefully composed Eisenhower Plaza. This is not the empty, ‘stillborn’ malaprop, formulaic, self absorbed, hermetic and disturbingly arbitrary planning to lamentably be observed in all other proposals currently on the table (from Mr.Gehry’s on through the rest of my fellow Competition Awardees). Our Proposal takes its character and its expression from the essential character of the Capital City, from a Classicism, a Greek Revival, characteristic of the very roots and essence of Washington DC, a Classicism uniquely simple, democratic, and American — indeed the very characteristics Mr. Eisenhower would have admired. “
“As to what represents appropriate expression for a Memorial to this great General, Civic Leader, and President of our Republic, as well as author, along with General / President Washington of one of the two most important Farewell Addresses ever bestowed to our Nation, one might caution against such ‘tin pan alley’ tropes as any exclusively military representation, or any ‘schmaltzy’ (too casual, too gestural, patently ‘unheroic’) representations that the age of television might impose but which result in an erosion of Classical dignity.”
Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 192 user reviews.
The winning proposal by Daniel Cook is visually beautiful, and probably displays the strongest classical features, but it’s not my favorite. Cook has produced a wonderful plan for a model city square, but one that doesn’t address the specific features of the site. There is nothing to cover or visually mitigate the hideous Department of Education building, and the symmetrical paths don’t line up with the diagonal streets bordering the site. It’s a lovely plan lifted directly from the textbook, without enough tweaking for the location.
The second place concept by Sylvester Bartos and Whitley Esteban, which I endorsed Wednesday, focuses on the Maryland Avenue diagonal and is architecturally similar to the World War II memorial. Those are strengths. A weakness is that the rest of the site outside the central circle seems like an afterthought. Grassy lawns are OK, but additional programming of some kind would have strengthened this more.
Third place was a tie. The plan by Rob Fermin and Bruce Wolfe presents an interesting idea, but it appears underdeveloped. A colonnade could be beautiful, but the rendering doesn’t tell us much about how the site would work. Which direction would the colonnade face? What’s going on in the area with the globe and olive branches? Is it just a bare concrete expanse with those designs stamped in? I can’t tell enough about this proposal to know if I’d like it.
The other third place proposal came from Francisco Ruiz, who produced by far the most unique of these six ideas. His plan would develop a large portion of the site with two private mixed-use buildings extended along the Maryland Avenue axis, pointing to an L-shaped Eisenhower memorial pavilion at the northeast corner. This plan may well be the best urbanistically, but the pavilion doesn’t seem right. Ruiz’s unadorned southern-style agrarian classicism would be ideal for a Jefferson memorial, but strikes me as not quite right for a 20th Century general.
Scott Collison’s design received a commendation, and is my favorite. It would be my choice for the memorial. It turns the weaknesses of the site into strengths, most notably by using the plain Department of Education building as a frame for a perfectly-proportioned monument. The shape and ornament of Collison’s building are more original and thought-out than the others; I appreciate that his design incorporates the sort of angular details and deco features popular during Eisenhower’s career into a new and unique form of classicism. This is also the only design proposed that I can imagine becoming as iconic to the city as the gargantuan Jefferson and Lincoln memorials, which I think is a strength. The only weakness I see is that the plaza may be a little on the bare side. Even so, this is an extremely good proposal. It’s beautiful, and it screams Eisenhower.
Finally, another commendation went to the design by Michael Franck and Rodney Cook, which I also like very much, for much the same reasoning. It produces a singular giant column as monument, surrounded by a series of fountains in the shape of Eisenhower’s five star general insignia. The space is fantastic as a plaza, and could become a sort of Dupont Circle for the neighborhood (in the busy tourist season, at least). The rest of the site is a little underdeveloped, but could be a nice space if the expansive grass lawns were programmed more strongly.
All six of these proposals deserve praise, and I think all six of them have potential to be better than Gehry’s, which I think is lackluster and contrived. I especially like the Collison and Franck/Cook concepts, which do the best job of producing unique classical designs that have a clear relation to Eisenhower, and sit well upon the Maryland Avenue site. I would love for one of those designs to be selected and actually built.
Average Rating: 4.9 out of 5 based on 236 user reviews.
A few years ago the idea of a pedestrian friendly big box store was almost unthinkable, but the idea is catching on, with several examples locally and around the country.
Locally the Columbia Heights Target is an obvious example, but not the only one. We also have the Tenleytown Best Buy, and of course, the proposed downtown Wal-Mart. In the suburbs, Gaithersburg’s new urbanist “Washingtonian Center” was an urban big box trail-blazer. Designed and built in the late 1990s, it features what may have been the country’s first pedestrian oriented Target, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Kohl’s.
Below there are pictures of several other examples from around the country, including a Home Depot in Chicago that puts DC’s to shame.
Home Depot, Halsted Street, Chicago. Photo by dmitrybarsky.
Home Depot, Halsted Street, Chicago. Photo by Payton Chung.
Target, Nicollet Street, Minneapolis. Photo by DesertDevil.
Target, Broadway, Chicago. Photo by Chicago Tribune.
Best Buy, Lockwood Place, Baltimore. Photo by Joe Architect.
Best Buy, Clark Street, Chicago. Photo by VivaLFuego.
Proposed Target, East Liberty, Pittsburgh. Photo by City of Pittsburgh.
Proposed Target, 4th and Mission Streets, San Francisco. Photo by SF Redevelopment Agency.
The National Civic Art Society wasn’t happy with Frank Gehry’s modernist proposal for an Eisenhower memorial near the National Mall, so they sponsored a competition to design an alternative. The results were released last night, including first and second place winners. Both winners, along with Gehry’s original design, are shown at right.
Gehry’s design has the advantage of offering a more direct connection to Eisenhower himself. Gehry proposes columns reminiscent of the Interstate highways Eisenhower championed, as well as large panels depicting Eisenhower’s life. On the other hand, it’s ugly and wouldn’t do anything to soften the harsh landscape of its site in the Southwest Federal Center.
On the other hand, the two competition winners are both beautiful and would bring a touch of grace to Southwest’s harsh streets, but they both have less to do with Ike himself. They’re each vastly superior as a city square, but probably inferior as a memorial. The second place winner does however bear a strong resemblance to the World War II memorial, which is a nice parallel.
Overall, I’d pick the second place competition design. Of the three choices, it’s the best compromise.
Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 169 user reviews.
New York’s High Line has become the darling of American parks, but did you know Rosslyn has been home to a similar elevated linear park for fifteen years?
Freedom Park covers approximately two blocks of an elevated roadway that was closed to traffic in 1996. From then until 2008 it was considered part of the Newseum, and featured museum exhibits along its route. When the Newseum moved to Pennsylvania Avenue, Freedom Park was turned over to private land owner Monday Properties, and converted to operate as a plaza.
Compared to the High Line, Freedom Park is small and bare. Rather than a gathering place for one of America’s densest residential neighborhoods, Freedom Park is primarily used as a lunch plaza by workers in Rosslyn’s many office buildings. But although it is less famous, our local elevated park is a nonetheless a fascinating urban place, and worth a visit if you’re in the neighborhood.
A slide show of the park is below, or see the photos with commentary in a thread at SkyscraperPage forum.
Surface parking lots are the scourge of urbanism. They take up valuable land that could be used for activity-generating buildings, and they spread development out so that walking and transit use are more difficult. They’re more harmful to cities than empty lots, because they encourage more driving, which in turn encourages more parking lots. Washington is lucky not to have very many of them.
We do have some, however, and their locations can tell us something about our city. Where is there a lot of underused land? What property owners are doing harm to the city? Where can future development be most easily accommodated? These questions in mind, I set out to map the surface parking lots of downtown Washington, using Google Maps.
In the map below, which can be enlarged, red indicates typical parking lots that could presumably be used for other purposes, purple indicates parking lots that appear to be owned by the government or other institutions and are unlikely to be developed, and orange indicates the locations for CityCenter DC and the future downtown Walmart.
A few points that jump out:
Downtown is almost completely devoid of surface parking lots, an accolade that very few other American cities claim.
Government and institutional uses are major offenders.
NoMA and the Mount Vernon Triangle (together shown in yellow) still has a lot of development potential left.
7th Street near the new convention center is begging for attention.
All I did to create this map was to simply color on top of aerial imagery, so it’s possible some of the details are wrong, or that I missed a few lots. If you see something that should be corrected, let me know in the comments. Regardless, it’s an interesting study.
15th Street, NW is famous for its wonderful cycle track, but did you that 15th Street, SE is also home to one of the city’s most unique pieces of cycling infrastructure? It’s the only street in the city to have a green-painted bike lane (location map). The practice is common in New York and some other cities, and is done to more clearly delineate bike lanes from auto traffic. Hopefully it’s something we’ll see more of in the future.
The image below shows the 15th St SE bike lane, and is from WashCycle, which naturally knew about it long before I did.
Hat tip to twitter reader whiteknuckled for the head’s up.
Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 271 user reviews.
Holy cripes is this cool! A team from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County has put together a computer model of the L’Enfant city in 1814. Watch the video for more.
I visited Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown over the weekend. The European Romantic-style garden was, as always, gorgeous. It is without a doubt one of Washington’s most under-appreciated parks. I highly recommend a visit, especially if you haven’t been there before.
For the next best thing, enjoy these pictures. The flickr set is below, or you can view them with narration in a thread at the SkyscraperPage forum.
Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 180 user reviews.
